I’m bringing you another family update today, sharing what we’ve been up to this past month as we’ve kicked off what will be one of the weirdest summers ever.
Are you tired of people talking about how this summer is so weird? It feels like it still hasn’t started yet because we haven’t done any of our normal summer activities. But somehow the calendar already says that it’s mid-July. I’m tired of talking about it, too, but I’m also feeling all of that 100%. I absolutely love summer. I’m doing my best to enjoy it as fully as possible, even though obviously, it’s far from normal and we’re sad to be missing out on most of our favorite summer traditions.
As with every update during the global pandemic, I wouldn’t here sharing again if things weren’t going well for me and my little family. There is stress and general worry, for sure. But we’re all doing okay. For the most part, day-to-day life at home remains low-key and uneventful.
We kicked off June getting the exterior of our house painted. It’s been in need of new exterior paint for years. This ended up being a great year to get it done, as we could give people work at a time when that’s much needed without having them actually in the house. We couldn’t be happier with the colors. The new paint job is making every single day in this house better.
You may or may not remember that we didn’t start easing up on social distancing at all until June because Jake had a couple of COVID exposures at work in mid-May. I feel like so many people have gone straight from 0 to 60 with moving back to any sort of normal life. We’re still cruising at about 10. We have started seeing a few people again who have also been social distancing this whole time. We’re only planning visits for a few hours at a stretch and all outside. We’ve had a few play dates for Tommy, my parents have come up to visit twice, and we had Tommy’s birth family over for the first time since all this started.
Despite rescheduling to aim for better weather, it still rained like crazy when Tommy’s birth family was here. So we moved the visit into the garage. I’m so grateful that we had such an amazing relationship with them. The whole thing wasn’t weird at all. If you’d told me back in my early 20s that I’d end up having the majority of a visit with my son’s birth family in my garage because we’re in the midst of a global pandemic and not hanging out with anyone inside for the foreseeable future, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have believed any of it.
Tommy went back to swimming this month. It felt like returning to something from another lifetime, not picking up an activity we’d been doing regularly until just a few months ago. I was nervous, but it’s been awesome so far.
We got Tommy’s hair cut for the first time since all this started, which was definitely an adventure. I’m glad we got it done. However, I’m not in a hurry to do anything else involving that much close contact with the general public any time soon.
We had an outside Kindermusik class at a park right on the lakefront. Tommy absolutely loves watching the boats this year and also really loved checking out the canon at this park.
Does anyone else live in an area where people are still going strong playing the painted rock game? It was a big thing last year and remains popular this summer.
During a summer storm, we got a hint of a rainbow. It had been ages since I’d seen a rainbow. We need a few more of them, 2020.
We’ve seen wild turkeys in our neighborhood before. This June is the first time I saw one right in our yard.
Every year a bird family builds a nest in a wreath we hang on the front of our house. This year is the first time we’ve seen baby birds in it. It goes so quickly. It seems like one day they’re tiny babies reaching their peaks up for food and then the next day they’re so big they barely fit in the nest and are ready to fly away.
The lilies popped early this year! Many summers we don’t see lilies until mid-July. They were in full force by the last week of June.
I have never been more appreciative of living in such a beautiful neighborhood right on Lake Michigan as I have been these past four months. Getting to be outside in a safe, quiet space where we can enjoy nature every day is going a long way toward helping us keep our sanity during this crazy time. I’m ridiculously appreciative to our neighbors who let us crash their yards and beaches way more often than normal to help us mix up our routine.
Head to the family section of the blog for all past family updates as well as baby/toddler Tommy updates.
