At the end of March, I wrote a reflection on our first two weeks of quarantine. It was the beginning of spring and the beginning of an alternate reality that, though we didn’t know it at the time, would still largely be our reality many months later. And here we are, many months later. While so many aspects of our life remain in that shifted state – masks on, sanitizer at the ready – a significant milestone took place this week when our kids returned to preschool after five and a half months at home. With that, an acute season of our life closed, and I wanted to record a few more reflections here. I’ve often said that one of my least favorite things in life is trying to work when my children are around. I hate it. It leaves me exhausted and irritable, feeling like I failed at being both a parent and an employee, and since becoming a mom I have put structures in place to avoid it whenever possible. I like to think I’m not a distracted parent, and perhaps that’s why trying to do focused work on my computer while my children are clamoring for my attention feels so icky and alien to everything I try to cultivate in our family life. Even aside from my life as a parent, I think it’s the Enneagram 5 in me that makes me highly value compartmentalizing my work life and my personal life, and wrapping things up cleanly before I transition from one to the other. (Trying to do something for work on my phone while my kiddos are in the room is literally the stuff of nightmares for me.) Anyway. All that to say that after our preschool closed, John and I knew attempting to juggle two