Families know April Fool’s Day, but they’re also no stranger to being the fools of every other day of the year.
It’s funny, really. Parenting has always been a story worth telling, but when the waves of the pandemic hit (sorry for making you see that word for the thousandth time), it’s started to read off more like a New York Times bestselling series. Turn to your children —- babies, toddlers, in-betweens, and outliers of all kinds — to understand how April Fool’s can be a yearlong event for parents and their children.
If you want honesty in its most genuine and foolish form, look no further than the unprovoked confrontation provided by your darling children at any time of the day. They’re nothing short of a stand-up comedian, a thunderstorm, and your own personal overpaid therapist rolled up into one. They won’t fool you. Okay, so they will, and they won’t hesitate to do it all over again at the bat of a pretty eyelash, but they’ll also leave you feeling like you were the one doing all of the fooling in the first place. In this recent never-ending turnover of months, they’ve made that clear even more so with conniving ways that a little too closely resemble ourselves.
Our team at Ububba can’t help but reflect on how this past year has tricked us into thinking books, blogs, and advice from our haven of connections would prepare us for the rollercoaster that is raising a family during such limbo times.
Trick #1: We were made into hypebeasts.
Being primarily stuck at home has left us no choice but to indulge in the comfort of oddly niche trends that have been sparked by guilty hours spent on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and the likes. Everyone fell victim to the hype of Dalgona coffee, becoming extremely involved in the concept of having a fully functional garden within arm’s access, learning dances and reciting meme audios courtesy of the TikTok craze, and much more than we would like to admit. We followed waves and wanted our little ones to jump on the bandwagon.
Trick #2: We’ve sanitized until we could not sanitize any longer.
It’s strange seeing how sanitation stations are regularly peeking around every corner watching over us like Big Brother, waiting to hold us hostage for many seconds of each and every day. It’s even more strange to think about it from our children’s perspectives. Any form of sanitizer has been heavily ingrained in our minds, onto our poor dry hands, and deep within our olfactory memory to the point of near alcohol poisoning every time we smell that 99.99% effectiveness.
Trick #3: We’ve had to figure out how to socially distance ourselves from the rest of our family.
Relearning our routines was nothing short of an epic feat. We’ve evolved from forces of nature to creatures of comfort at the snap of a finger and had to reintegrate ourselves into our own homes to fend off our own thoughts and those of our family members. Our routines had to adapt to the new normal that is Zoom bubbles and finding new ways to entertain our babies within the confines of four walls. How many more arts and crafts activities and GoNoodle videos could we discover until our kids caught wind of our creative block?
Trick #4: Remembering that we’re still stronger and better together.
Whether we liked this last year or not, we’ve overcome it and that is a triumph in itself as we learned how to deal with the mental and physical shifts that were the byproduct of our new lifestyles. Still, with the presence of our fun little ones around, it’s safe to say that the bonds formed are stronger than the guidelines for buying toilet paper last March.
So, on this April Fool’s Day, why not take the time to laugh at all the foolish little things that life has to offer?
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