Parenting challenges during a pandemic, help please.

Well, it's been a minute, so to speak.  I think of this thread from time to time and wonder whether the situation has improved for everybody who was struggling with circumstances that none of us were really prepared for.

Things are better now for us.  We are still sort of scarred from having raised the kid alone for the first four years.  Said kid seems none the worse for wear.  When the restrictions loosened up, we started getting him involved in a few activity classes, then preschool.  We met some of the parents, and the kids have now formed a circle of friends for play dates, birthday parties, etc.  It's getting better.

Anybody else have anything to share?

Well, kids are back in the groove. Oldest was in Pre-K last school year while the youngest is in daycare. Both at the daycare for summer right now. Oldest starting kindergarten in August.

Wife switched positions at work and has to go in twice a pay period (2 weeks) and it's going to shift to 4x by December. I have full remote, but there's a possibility they are going to strip that from those of us who live within 50 miles of the office. Gonna be bad if they flip that switch before the end of the school year...  (Wife and I work for same employer, it's an hour fifteen commute one way).

Youngest is doing the terrible twos thing, not pandemic related, but still a lot. That said, he likes hanging out with me in the shop when I'm working on cars, so I've got that going for me.

In our house, pages have been turned - almost entirely for the better.

I'm working out of the house most days and pleased to no longer "have to" spend an extra 40 hours per month commuting. Think about that (which was just "normal" before!)... Thankful for that.

My youngest is off to college in 3 weeks. We just did freshman orientation a couple days ago. It sucks that his sophomore year had most band activities canceled but they made the best of a bad situation. Thankful for that.

My oldest survived a pretty hard couple years (a permanent, likely long Covid type illness that was originally misdiagnosed as mental health) but is greatly improved and back in school while living at home for now. Thankful for that.

We learned a lot about our ability to persevere.

Kiddo turned out good so far, pretty sure I have some scar tissue to work through. 

So it goes?

I watched this thread when it was front-page, but never contributed as things were dark (I was work from home, and the kids were school from home at the time).

But I survived, and the kids don't seem much worse for the wear.

Like Crusty, I took a beating...  I used to run a home-brew club with the guys at work.  Not a single one of us has brewed a batch of anything since the pandemic (and that should tell you just about all you need to know about how we all managed to survive)

Days are still getting better and better.  I was able to identify signs of depression there for a while, and I cant remember the last time I detected one of those in recent memory (depression and me are polar opposites, so you can imagine my surprise when I discovered I was starting to fall into it).  Hopefully the upward trend continues.

and so it goes.

We made it. We kept Tunawife alive, which was the main goal. I still think about Paul every so often, and it tears me up.