Everything's changed, but it's all stayed the same

My husband ran out of the house and left our 4-month-old baby in my lap. He lost track of time and realized he was due to pick up our son from school in eight minutes. They really don't like you being late. We got an email from the administrators asking parents to kindly be on time (in bold uppercase letters) because they need every minute for tidying up and disinfecting in the time of coronavirus.

"Time flies when you're having fun!" my husband yelled laughing as he scooted out the door. Moments before he'd kindly dropped a bouquet of flowers and a venti latte on my desk, "Drink it before it gets cold!" If you're a parent reading this, please, what is your secret to drinking hot coffee? I don't know it.

Our daughter looked up at me from the nursing pillow and smiled. She gurgled something and then gave me her signature squeal of delight. She wasn't that interested in nursing. She was more curious about the strange room she was in... our shared office nook which has gone mostly unused since she came out 20 weeks ago. She'd been gone with my husband since 8:30 a.m. — the longest we'd been apart since she was born in May — and I had some withdrawal. From hearing her voice, seeing her dimples and squishing her pudgy thighs.

Yesterday was my first day back from maternity leave, which feels strange to even write because there's nowhere to go back to except my home office space. Let's just say it's been 20 weeks since I had a purpose beyond feeding a tiny human, wrangling a spunky 4-year-old and playing tag-team with my husband on all things domestic. Two weeks ago I felt like I was on the precipice of a nervous breakdown at the sheer thought of this cherished time coming to an end, but yesterday I felt strangely OK. There were no tears. There were nerves, sure, about how we'd get the kiddo up and ready for school (he's not the biggest fan), if the baby would drink bottles, how my husband would cope looking after both kids, but when I got a peaceful photo from him at a nearby marina with the stroller I realized it's all going to be OK.

I had grand ideas for my time off from work. I hoped to (finally) launch my clothing line, I thought I would write an e-book on infertility (proud IVF mama x 2) and that maybe I'd even dust off a children's picture book manuscript from many years ago. I thought of writing blog posts about being a mom a second time, but the ideas never made it out of my head. I proudly started off the first few weeks of leave as a ravenous reader and that quickly subsided as we got deeper and deeper into lockdown.

Instead of focusing on what we didn't do, here's a little of what we did do:

We introduced both kiddos to the glory-ness of camping. One week this month we hit up three different campsites in a 10-day period. We may have been a bit overzealous as my son came down with a fever which put us all into a mild panic that he got the coronavirus. The fever passed on the third day, thank goodness, and in the week since he's showed no signs of any other symptoms.

We turned our son into a wildlife/nature freak. First, he grew obsessed with dinosaurs. So much so our neighbors continue to drop off hand-me-down dinosaur toys and books on our front stoop. While out on walks in the neighborhood he is prone to asking strangers random dino-related questions. "Did you know the stegosaurus plates change color?" Jury's out if this is fact or fiction, but the person inevitably responds and he usually corrects them on their pronunciation of various dinosaurs. Now we're really into PBS's "Wild Kratts" and figuring out which spooky creatures we're going to carve on our pumpkins.

We survived the exhausting newborn phase and all while chasing after our 4-year-old son. I thought No. 1 was hard, but keeping up with a pre-schooler while facing sleepless nights is no joke.

We have become experts on the stroller-friendly state and historic parks in our area. Our oldest likes to run and with limited outdoor space at our house (our rental has a yard, but it's more garden than kid-friendly playzone) we were forced to do research and come up with places to explore where we wouldn't put ourselves at risk of COVID.

We got a membership to the San Francisco Zoo. They've done a great job with coronavirus safety measures and with reservations required, they've been able to keep the crowds down. We'd visited zoos before with H, but he was slightly too little to appreciate them. It was more for mom and dad to get out of the house and walk around. Now he's wild about finding his favorite animals on the big maps and following the paths to them.

My husband and I have lost a collective 45 pounds. We started off the pandemic eating and baking all kinds of carbo/sugar-packed goodies (granted I was heavily pregnant). But once the baby came, we decided to make losing some extra elbeez a priority. For years my husband tried to convince me to cut carbs and eat more veggies and it only took me a decade to get on board with the program. We're nearing our 2013 wedding weight which is the goal.

My parents live roughly two hours away, and while they're rigid about social distancing, we have been able to spend quite a lot of time with them, be it a backyard picnic, a camping trip and even a visit to Tahoe. H loves his Nonnie and Bippy and I appreciate how lucky we are to be able to see them in person. My husband's parents live in Florida and who knows when we'll be able to reunite with them.

We tamed the tantrums of a 4-year-old. No easy task, I assure you. And for now, at least. There was a week-or-so stretch where the tantrums were daily and there was hitting and scratching involved. We quickly adapted the "1-2-3 Magic" approach and we have had great success getting him dressed and getting him to brush his teeth.

We've grown even closer as a family. Our son is a doting big brother, I continue to be in awe of my husband's stamina keeping up with the high demand of two kiddos and the packing and unpacking of the truck required for all of our outdoorsy adventures, and baby Skylar is our little beacon of light amid the scary stuff going on around us (we live in the Bay Area and experienced the orange morning sky + 10 days of nasty air quality issues on top of the coronavirus restrictions). It can get heavy at times, but I look at her beaming eyes and face and it all goes away.

I told my manager on a call this morning I feared I would log into Slack for the first time and feel like I had to learn a new language. But lucky for me, while I know my team has been working tirelessly these past few months keeping up with the atrocious news cycle, I was comforted that I recognized the landscape, the workflow and the banter. A friend/colleague hopped right on a video call with me yesterday and we laughed because it felt like no time had passed, like we were in this weird time warp. Apart but together. Yes, I now have two kiddos and yes, a baby's cries may interrupt a team meeting one of these days, but I'm still here, my coffee is still cold and I'm grateful and ready.