Ana: “What a whirlwind of a year this has been. It almost feels time bending, no time has passed, yet all time has. We haven’t seen our families in a year. Enzo Francisco, our 5-month-old, has yet to meet his grandma and almost all of his family. I thought having a newborn during the pandemic would mean that we would maybe have a simpler few months but quarantine brought its own struggles. Finding safe childcare proved more difficult than usual and the need more urgent since we are working from home and we don’t have close family to help with that. It was not easy (and still isn’t) to meal plan, teach a toddler (Lu is back to school now thank goodness), soothe a newborn, watch the news, get new projects (I am a freelance designer & creative director) and churn out work… moms really get the short end of the stick here. They are expected to mother full-time and work full-time, the wild thing is that we try to do it (!) Meanwhile I can’t claim a nanny or a sitter as employees on my taxes even though they are essentially personal assistants. Most of our friends and family have hit the proverbial Pandemic-wall, myself included.
2021 is starting to look up, the elections are past us, vaccination is around the corner for us, businesses are loosening their budgets (which is good for everyone, especially for small businesses like mine), Lu is back to socializing at school, we have a great sitter, the weather is nicer so we can go outside more often. If we are out and we see a friend who we haven’t seen in a year, I tell them my best quarantine-mom-joke, which is: ‘it’s ok, I ordered this baby online.’”