Working From Home With A Toddler And A Husband

Georgie is a high school teacher in Sydney and has spent the last couple of weeks training how to run virtual lessons remotely. She is now putting that into practice as the school has sent all students and teachers home to maintain social distancing. Her new makeshift 'classroom' is also shared by her two year Rex and her husband who is also working from home. We caught up with her to see how it's going.

Day 1 – Set up cute desk space looking out the window- this is going to be great! So happy to spend more time together. 

Day 2 – Ok, need to take this seriously. 

Day 3 – Are there any wine delivery services?  

Our day starts at 7am when Rex wakes up although I don’t sit down at the desk until 9am and somehow I’m already exhausted. Desperate need for another coffee but I have to stop myself incase I get too jittery.  

Rex is so thrilled to have us both to himself – no more tears when we had to leave him at day care. But I can tell he misses his friends at day care and both his grandmas. They each used to take him for a full day during the week. We’ve given them both ‘holidays’ for social distancing, so we make sure to Facetime a lot during the day – it’s hard to say if that’s more for Rex’s benefit or theirs.  

I’m a teacher at a high school and all staff are working from home, we host virtual lessons with our classes, so when I have a class to take my husband is on ‘keep Rex quiet’ duty. At the beginning of the day we go through both our calendars and work out who needs to be left alone for what time and for how long. And if we have clashing video calls – MOVIE TIME!  

Video calls have been interesting with my husband's work, Rex gets really shy and quiet when he sees a screen full of strangers waving at him – most people want to see him though, so it’s a welcome distraction in those mundane meetings. 

Both of our work have been really great at recognising the challenges at home, and have let us stagger our work days. Apart from classes, I can only get 3-4 hours work done during the day, the rest I save for when Rex goes to bed, with an extra large glass of wine. This is tiring work!

So far he hasn’t ruined any of our laptops or monitors, although the keyboards are a bit sticky. It’s only been a week of working from home, we are really lucky to have some extra space so that we can work in separate rooms, when we get sick of each other. Lunch time is our quiet time as Rex is asleep.  

Hot tip – building a fort is a great activity as you can nap inside while it’s being built around you. 

Tune in for an update next week – hopefully we’re all still talking.