Kamp Kitzelmann

During these C-19 times, we’ve adjusted our schedules to try and maintain our collective health, safety and sanity, as much as our individual lives will allow. For our household, this means that from 9a-6p Monday-through-Friday, AK sets up her mobile office at the dining room table. As Miles’s preschool is closed, my SAHParenting job is once again, a very full-time gig.

There were three hours of preschool each weekday morning, and I worked each Tuesday as my shift at our co-op. It doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but it meant that for 12 hours a week, MK was receiving: caregiving, friendship, and playtime with all kinds of sensory objects+toys+imaginative play, that weren’t available in his home space.

I have attempted to be gentle and kind with myself during this strange time, especially on the caregiving front. I am not a professional teacher, experienced preschool director, or one of those adults that has seemingly endless patience for playing in the land of preschool imaginations. I am however, a parent that loves their child very much, and wants them to feel joy, love, and my undivided attention when I’m able to provide it. We’ve ordered a few new things to be delivered here and there: bath tablets that fizz and change the bath color, sensory beads that “grow” larger and squishier as they absorb water, and some “quiet-time” (hahahahahaha) art supplies. Mostly though, I have been relying on games and toys we already owned, while remembering that a box and a yard and some books and a tent, water from the hose, old costume jewelry, and paint sticks we had on hand, can provide days+weeks of imaginative fun.

Buuuuut, if you let the doubt creep in, it can feel like a massive sense of pressure to be everything to everyone, all while being available to perform all of your life roles, at all times. That doubt is a recipe for feeling like a failure, and I, for one, would rather spend my time and mental space celebrating the things I know our family can achieve right now.

I am immensely proud of how well our family has worked together as a team during this time. AK and I have a lot of experience navigating different types of challenging life phases together; from those previous adventures, we’re enacting the things learned, as well as focusing on communicating our needs during these times of chaos and the unknown. But you know, those lovely+true things said, when you have one professional adult on weekday video calls+meetings, one energetic preschooler whose inside voice volume button is, erm, not fully developed, two elderly puggles longingly searching for sunbeams+undisturbed rest time, and one household manager+distractable human being living/working/playing together, you have: people with VERY different objectives for the same space. This is not an ideal scenario we’re all living right now, BUT, we are healthy, we are grateful, and we are using this time to hone our skills of navigating life, as a 24/7 family unit.

So, from Kamp Kitzelmann to you: hang on, hang in, and try and be gentle with yourself. We’re ALL learning how to navigate this new version of life, together.