By Emily Williams
On a typical Mother’s Day, Mountain Brook resident Lauren Nichols would have a schedule in place. The day would begin with church, followed by brunch and then time spent with her mother and her mother-in-law.
This year will be very different.
“Sometimes these holidays go by in a blur because we just don’t take the time to enjoy them and really just savor the moment,” Nichols said. “I think this year we’ll definitely have a much more laid-back approach.”
The laid-back approach is not something Nichols, who is marketing and communications lead for Ascension Alabama | St. Vincent’s Health System, typically favored before the life-altering coronavirus pandemic.
When the state began making strides toward social distancing, Nichols wasn’t sure whether she would be working more from home or at the hospital.
“We were out there preaching to the community that we needed for people to follow social distancing guidelines, and we just felt like we should do the same,” she said. Many employees working in any areas outside of in-patient care have been working from their homes.
She had to make the transition from working mother to “stay-at-home working mother” in a matter of days. Her home has taken on as many jobs as there are people who spend their days in it. It’s a workplace for Nichols and her husband, Hunter, and it’s a preschool for their twin sons.
There has been a learning curve while acclimating to the new way of life, but Nichols said she believes the experience has changed her for the better.
“I feel like we have just now gotten into a good rhythm, which is funny because everything is probably about to change again,” she said. “It takes a while to unwind from what you have typically been doing and work on creating your new normal.”
Nichols has found that her workload hasn’t decreased at all. If anything, it has grown with the need to increase communication among remote workers and the public.
“There is definitely a lot of work to do, lots of long hours and lots of late nights, but now I’m trying to balance that with 5-year-old twins,” she said. “I will say, there has been many a conference call or Skype meeting that I’m on when a child has run through the background screaming.”
There are many things that Nichols “just rolls with” now, but in the beginning she and her husband tried to create a strict schedule for the boys, mapping their day out down to the half-hour.
“We found out quickly that that didn’t really work for us,” she said, laughing.
Nichols has learned that creating structure for a child doesn’t necessarily mean getting the timing right so much as creating a regular flow for the day.
The idea of a schedule has since inspired a routine Sunday afternoon activity of the boys’ making their own calendar for the week.
“We get out a big piece of butcher paper and lay out all of the days of the week,” she said.
Since the boys can’t read yet, Nichols and her husband have them draw visual representations. They will discuss what the weather will be each day, cutting out suns or clouds for rainy days. If the kids want to eat outside, they might draw a picnic table, or if they want to have a game night, they can draw games.
“It has given them great excitement because they know what to look forward to the next day,” she said.
The flow of the day typically remains the same, waking up at a certain time in the morning before spending the first half of the day working on educational activities and the latter half with more play-based fun.
Throughout the workday, Nichols and her husband tag-team, picking up the slack whenever the other has extra work. Nichols said learning resources provided by the boys’ preschool teachers at Crestline Elementary School have been a great help.
“I will say, I don’t know how the parents are doing it that have children who are older,” Nichols said. “We’re working on letters right now. We’re in a much easier place. I can handle that. I don’t know how I would be dealing with complicated math problems.”
Present for the Small Stuff
Nichols said she’s been surprised that her kids have loved spending more time at home.
She recalled a week or so ago watching her sons just playing in the mud in their yard.
“I have never seen bigger smiles,” she said. “And they thought this was just the most fun.”
When they noticed her, they immediately thought they would be in trouble. Instead she told them to just have fun.
Normally, she confessed, playing in the mud in the middle of the day would be frowned upon, because on a normal day there typically would be a busy schedule full of places to be and people to see.
“There was a moment in January when I thought, life is just so hectic,” Nichols said.
She was feeling the strain while balancing her career with volunteer work, whether serving on a board for a non-profit or taking part in a community group. In addition, though her kids are still young, they were already involved in T-ball and in church activities.
“We just felt like we were going all the time, and it’s funny because my children would always say, ‘Can we just stay home, Mom? We just want to stay home and play,’” Nichols said.
She has seen a change in the past month in the way her kids play that reminds her of her own childhood.
“It seems like we didn’t have as many distractions back then,” she said. “Of course, we didn’t have iPads and tons of the games that we have now. Some of my fondest memories were just playing in the backyard, and I feel like we’ve gotten back to the simple things in life.”
Nichols’ boys have been more creative in their play, making up games and holding nightly “concerts” to sing songs for their parents.
“We’re giving them more time to be kids, just be children. A lot of the learning in life, I think, comes from that,” she said.
Nichols also has enjoyed being present for more of the little things.
“For me, working a lot and not being home, there’s always that ‘mom guilt’ or ‘parent guilt.’ Am I not around enough? Am I missing moments?” she said.
Crestline Elementary representatives stopped by a couple of weeks ago to put their traditional crayon balloons on the Nichols’ mailbox, signifying the twins as rising kindergartners.
“It was great because I was actually here,” she said. “I got to experience the moment when they saw the crayons and were so excited. Normally, I would be getting a picture or hearing about it later.”
Though she hasn’t had to have any deep conversations with her sons about the darker side of the pandemic, Nichols said they have been able to recognize how big the issue is without being able to understand it yet.
They know that they can’t see their friends because of “the sickness,” but they don’t totally understand why they can’t see their grandparents. Nichols also has noticed that they mention the virus in their prayers and create themes akin to the pandemic’s effects when playing with their toys.
While her sons may only remember the fun aspects of their pandemic confinement, Nichols is sure she and her husband will remember it all.
“This is really helping us prioritize what is truly important,” she said. “I am hopeful, and I feel that this is definitely changing me and changing the way I view things.”
