A health crisis, pregnancy and a newborn were not the only features of 2019. The year was also dominated by a very busy and extremely talkative three-year-old; the perfect recipe for A LOT of chaos. Toddlers may struggle to articulate how they’re feeling but it’s fairly obvious when they are anxious. It typically plays out in tantrums and clinginess, and in our case, what we thought was an unhealthy obsession with his dummy. Out of desperation we reached out to Jenny Hale, one of the family coaches at Parenting Place. Jenny reassured us that now was not the time to be ditching the dummy (or ‘me-me’ as our son liked to call it). We had enough going on, she said, and if it was giving him comfort, then that was okay and he would give it up when he was ready. It was just what we needed to hear because it was only a few months later that he decided on his own accord to “give me-me to the rubbish truck”. So, in the bin the dummy went, never to return! We were so proud of our little boy. The phrase ‘pick your battles’ rang especially true for us during that time.
Another phrase that rang true for us was ‘annus horribilus’, which is Latin for ‘the terrible year’. 2019 really was our terrible year. And just when we were starting to come out the other side, bam! COVID hits. But you know what? We’re okay. If someone had told us that after all we had been through, 2020 would bring a deadly virus, shutting our country down and forcing us to stay at home for seven weeks with two young kids, we would shake our heads in disbelief. How the heck would we cope? But humans are resilient and creative creatures. From bear hunts to online yoga sessions, I have been amazed at what we will come up with to get by.