How to Blog During a Pandemic

This blog post will provide some key tips to help you maintain your blog during the pandemic.

The key to doing this involves learning a very important skill; how to repeat posts on a daily basis so you don’t end up filling your draft folder with hundreds and hundreds of posts which you started but never completed.

Take this template, and add your twist to the end.

Blog post #…

Today, I woke up.

Today, I stayed home. Actually, we all stayed home. Today marked the _______ day, that we all stayed home.

Today, we (Insert an activity from the list below);

Browsed social media

Read

Got kids onto their zoom classes

Worked from home / my bed / my dining room table / my home office

Tried to work

Exercised / Tried to Exercise

Browsed Tik Tok (and learned…)

Ordered something online / a package came today which contained…

Optional: Left the house

Not optional: Wore a mask!

Went to sleep

The highlight of my day was…

Ever Wondered How Fast You Can Get Out Of Bed In the Middle Of the Night When Your House Alarm Goes Off?

In case you have ever wondered just how fast you can get out of bed in the middle of the night when you home alarm system starts wailing, I can tell you this… Seconds!

Last night, at about 1:50am, while Toronto was in the midst of a very windy weather “situation”, the home alarm that we have on to, you know, keep us safe, started to wail.

As I shot out of bed, I was met in the hallway by 2 of my 3 children, ready to defend our house from intruders.

The teenager… slept.

I slapped on the lights, ran to the front door… closed.  Surveyed the windows… Intact.  Raced to the back door… WIDE OPEN!

“Intruder alert!” I screamed.  Gather your weapons!

Then the phone rang… alarm company.  Wanted to know what’s up.

As my wife spoke to them, I walked to back door to see that there were no footprints in the snow, and no possible way that anyone could enter the house that way.

Did I mention it was REALLY windy?!?

I looked at the door, it was still locked.  The force from the wind pushed on the door so much that the bolt slide over allowing the door to fly open.

So we told that to the alarm company, bolted the door back in place and then secured the door was the top and bottom with the extra latches – likely meant for really windy days like last night.

The kids, clearly traumatized, could not go back to sleep.  In fact, they “had” to sleep with mummy…

I took them into their rooms while I grabbed a hockey stick and checked the rest of the house, just to be safe.

I came back to sleeping children except of the one child who may or may not get anxious every now and then, and I sat with him explaining what the sound was, why it occurred, showed him that I barricaded the back door so that we could go back to sleep and then sat with him while he quickly, but restlessly dozed off.

As I lay there, wide awake at 2:30am, I thought back to when we first moved into the house and started putting the alarm on at night… One morning I forgot to turn it off, and opened the door and the alarm screeched away.  This child must have been… 3 or 4-years-old, and from that day onward for a good year or 2, he would get up, race into our bedroom, see if the alarm was still red (armed) and he would point at it and yell, “red light, red light”, so that we would turn off the alarm in his presence.

He wanted to make sure that never happened again.

It was quite the responsibility for a little child to take on, but that was his thing.

Then again, this was the same child who – after a couple of days of very heavy rain – asked us if he should build an ark so that we could all escape safely…

So the answer to the above question is seconds, and the answer to the question: How fast can you get back to sleep.. That answer is not as quickly as I got out of bed and downstairs… Not even close.

This is GREAT! Now only if I could add more hours in the day…

All things being considered, the past week was a pretty darn good one for The Urban Daddy.

He has the WWE Network.

He found Impact Wrestling.

He gained 8 points in his hockey pool.

 

The only problem is that there is not enough hours in the day for all of these “events”.

 

I showed my kids the WWE Network and they cannot quite understand the concept of 24/7.

“Every time I turn to that channel, there is wrestling on…”  Yup.  For the kids that means they get to see all the wrestler I have been talking about for years, and they get to see the wrestlers who belong to the wrestling figures they play with.

For me, it means no more reality TV when I morph into The Urban Daddy at night time.  No more Kardashians, no more Honey Boo Boo, nothing to do with fixing household problems, no more cooking competitions, and no more I can’t believe I was… (pregnant / fat / thin / dead / an alien / a boy / a girl…)

As the Miz would say, “Quiet on the set.  Quiet on the set!”  AWESOME!

 

As for Impact wrestling, at the start of the new year (2015) Impact left Spike and headed off to nowhere land with a Canadian World Champion and other Canucks on the roster without a TV deal for us Canadians.  More importantly, Impact has FINALLY ditched the “TNA” part of their name (Total Non-stop Action) and the most important change was the removal of their terrible announce team!  I’m okay with Taz, and Josh Matthews will grow into the role, but I hated the old announcer whose name thankfully escapes me.

Now I found out that Impact has set up a Canadian-only link so we can view their shows.  The link is here:

http://www.impactwrestling.com/videos/Canada

I’m watching their most recent show now!  It’s apparently updated Saturday mornings at 10am.

YAY!

 

And finally, I’m out of last place in my hockey pool, thanks for some key players who have gotten hot (Kris Letang, Alex Barkov, Wayne Simmonds, to name a few).  I’d be much higher than 10th out of 15 teams if I had selected better goaltenders.  I chose the Edmonton Oiler goalies, who remind me of that old joke out of Detroit when the Red Wings had a struggling Chris Osgood and Mike Vernon as their backstoppers.  The comment was that the Wings were going to play Osgood or No-good, and the Oilers goalies have me so far in dead last in all goalie categories that my other 2 goalies, Robin Lehner in Ottawa and Kari Ramo in Calgary cannot help me out of.

I need a goalie.

Other teams want all my good players for little in return because they know I’m ready to shed salary, but I’m waiting for a really good return so I can make up some group this year and have the best group ready for next year.

 

So, who needs sleep?

WWE, Impact, and all the west coast hockey games…

Awesome!!

Random Children Car Conversations: “That Really Sucks, Eh?”

Driving in the car with children, as you all well know, can be either a pleasure or a pain depending on a number of factors usually beyond our control as parents.  In fact, children even have the ability to be educational or hilarious in the car, if they want, but being disruptive and difficult is usually the easiest.

Every now and then they say something funny, brilliant or even hilarious, which must be shared with the world…

A couple of weeks ago, while driving in the car with the children, our 9-year-old son, Linus began a rather short discussion with my wife which showed us that he is finally understanding the meaning of life and that – as we’ve been saying all along – life ain’t fair.

Not related to the post, but rather the weather! Our steps last fall.

I had to share it!

Linus: “Mummy, you know when you find that perfect spot in bed that is so comfortable and warm and then, of course, you have to get up to pee and when you come back to bed, you cannot find that spot again?”

Mummy: “Yes”

Linus: “That sucks, eh?”

…

Looking For Structure While Adding Responsibilities To The Children? See How Our School-Year Started!

Structure.

Consistency.

Responsibilities.

Independence.

All things we want our children to have, when they’re older, so they are able to lead fulfilling lives and, to be honest, so we don’t have to do everything for them.  But when is it the right time?

How about now!

A week before school started for my children – ages ranging from 9 to 4 – I started modeling the morning routine, while my wife and I continued to follow the exact same evening and bedtime routine she set in place when we had one child and he was still drooling and in diapers.  That consistency has clearly displayed our expectations of the children and it makes the time we have with them after school more organized and enjoyable.

(Nothing screams routine than the summer when for one week the kids had no programs, no camp, and were going crazy looking for things to do.  “I’m bored” was a common expression of frustration from the kids many times during each and every day.)

With all that being said, here is the schedule I presented to the children on Labour Day, and we worked through today, their first day of school.  I’m sure there will be some tweaking done, but I can say that this morning’s routine was the smoothest it has been in a long time – for them and for me!

Children’s Schedule for the 2014 / 2015 School Year.

Good Morning!

Before you come downstairs in the morning, please:
• Make Your Bed
• Get Dressed
• Clean Room / Tidy the floor

Kitchen Routine:
• Say good morning to your father and to each other
• Drink a glass / cup of water
• Have a piece of fruit
• Help with, or make your own, breakfast
• Eat it

When You Have Finished Breakfast:
• Rinse off your dishes
• Place them in the dishwasher, or
• Wash them, dry them and put them away
• Make sure your place is clean (no food on your chair or the floor)

Help with Lunches:
• Make sure your lunch box is out, and put in it;
• Nori
• Vegetables
• Apples sauce with a spoon
• Fill your water bottle

Go Upstairs To Your Bathroom:
• Wash your face
• Brush your hair
• Wait for Daddy to help you brush your teeth

*Hug and Kiss Mummy

Front door:
• Sunscreen on / Snowpants on
• Make sure your glasses are in your bag
• Place your lunch and water bottle in your bag

8am – LEAVING the house to walk to school.

Home from school:
• Wash your hands
• Bring your lunch box to the kitchen and empty it
• Put dishes in dishwasher
• Put lunchbox on the counter
• Empty your water bottle
• Put water bottle on the counter

Free Time:
• Play / read / relax / enjoy.
• NO electronics during the week
• NO TV during the week

Dinner Prep:
• Come to the kitchen to see what you can do to help with dinner
• Set the kitchen table – plates, cutlery, glasses, napkins, water, and the mats in the middle of the table

Homework Time:
• Practice piano
• Spirit of Math
• Regular homework

Dinner Time:
• When You Are Finished, Ask to be Excused
• Thank Mummy for making you another amazing dinner
• After dinner take your plate, cutlery and glass to the counter. Put your napkin in the recycling under the sink
• Rinse plate and cutlery and place in the dishwasher
• Place glass in the dishwasher

Before Bed:
• Put everything in your bag for tomorrow and place it at the front door.
• If you are having a snack, make sure you clean up properly afterwards
• Put your dirty clothes into your hamper
• Brush your teeth
• Floss
• Hugs and Kisses
• NO coming out of bed! Get a good night’s sleep for another amazing day tomorrow.

Good night and sleep tight!

We love you!

 

The kids love the schedule, although my boys prefer a much simpler routine based on the current WWE Champion Brock Lesner;

Eat

Sleep

Conquer

Repeat.