I know some of you are thinking, “Hmm, familiar face but I don’t recognise the name.”

It’s actually just same old me, but writing from a new blog. I received quite a few messages questioning the drastic changes, with all my old social media accounts disappearing, and the new ones surfacing not long after.

My very first post on this blog should include an explanation as to why the changes happened as well as explain a few different approaches I’ll be going with on this blog.

A few weeks back, HB sent me a link to an article discussing the horrors of children being targeted and sold into the sex trade. While the article focuses on America’s statistics, we know that this is something that is happening all over the world, and becoming worse with time.

Again, it doesn’t matter which country the statistics are from, the danger is happening all over.

From there the decision came through to stop uploading photos of our kids online, whether it’s on our public or private accounts. To protect our kids, we erased all photos where their faces are shown. Later on, in the article it’s discussed where children are mostly targeted from, and it’s all online, on the various social media platforms.

Even though I had a privacy policy on my previous blog, it doesn’t mean that my personal photos couldn’t and wouldn’t be downloaded, even though it clearly said you’re not allowed to. It makes me cringe each time I think about the possibility of someone doing that.

From now on, no more photos of our kids will be shared online where you can openly see their faces.

Another change I’m bringing in is that I previously used their nicknames online instead of their actual names to protect their privacy. While I was creating my new accounts, I started dissecting my ideas on what I would keep the same and what would be changing, and the nicknames popped up in my mind. I decided that that too would be taken out and replaced with generic terms to identify them.

See, here’s my line of thinking, the more I have in common with someone, the easier I can relate and feel comfortable around that person. Why is it any different with a child? The more information someone has about your child, the easier it is to win over with trusting them as there are feelings of familiarity.

While some might argue that all this is drastic and far-fetched, it doesn’t dismiss the fact that we’re doing this to protect our kids from the dangers lurking in this world.

This is our decision, as parents, and we expect it to be respected.

While I have already discussed this with close family and friends, I do ask those that know us personally and those that had been following me on my older social media accounts to please not leave comments with our children’s names or nicknames.

It’s all about keeping our children online, and this is an extention of that.

How is everyone still holding up with the lockdown and the closed schools? Kid1 is heading back this week again. His school already brought back all their grades in the first week of July due to meeting all the requirements the different Departments laid out and they received the go ahead. It seems the same has happened again, and all the grades are returning as per their old schedule.

Kid1 is excited, of course, he enjoys school and seeing all his friends is setting off happiness as well. Although, he’s not as excited as he was the first time they headed back. Maybe he’s just cautious about the school closing again after a short period of attendance and routines being disrupted again.

While we had a case of one teacher testing positive for Covid-19, the school quickly followed all necessary procedures and placed everyone in contact with the teacher into self-isolation, let the involved classes know about the developments and so far we haven’t had any more news of new cases.

I’m a lot less anxious this time, sending Kid1 back. As we’re all now aware of the procedures revolving around entering the school grounds, and how everyone is kept under a close eye to follow all the rules, it sets me at ease to know that everything really is under control and the school knows what they are doing.

I know this is a stress some parents have expressed, about schools not being prepared at all to receive kids under the current conditions, so I’m grateful that that’s one worry we don’t have anymore and we can continue his education on the revolving time table they school has worked out to make sure each grade gets the proper amount of attention to not uphold the school year any more than it has already been.

HB is still working from home, and it’s going well. He’s not physically in the house, so no one bothers him and vice versa as he spends most of his time in conference calls and there’s no excess noise to distract him.

To think that this year he would’ve been travelling for business so much more than last year. A while back, he mentioned to me, “Can you believe I would’ve been in Poland this week?” and it kind of hit home once again how different this year has turned out compared to last year’s insane schedule we were living on.

I know he misses the travelling (I would too if I got the chance to do regular long haul flights), but I’m grateful that he’s at home, and we have the opportunity to spend time together as a family – whereas last year the opportunities were far and wide.

It’s hard to think that last year this time I was overseas in Moldova, travelling back after ten years had passed, to see family and old family friends. I don’t travel at all, but I need to mention this. The freedom that was there to be out freely in public, with no masks and hesitations, to enjoy travelling and meeting with people, you miss that freedom even in your every day life.

I can’t even imagine how those that do travel often are feeling, being rooted down. The pandemic has dampened down a lot of plans in many ways of our lives, and each is experiencing a drawback. A couple of people had to cancel holiday plans, plans that have been set up since early last year, so the disappointment is pretty strong there.

I get it, it’s better to be safe than sorry (even if it was allowed to travel out of South Africa at this time), but it doesn’t mean that our emotions and frustrations can’t be voiced surrounding the circumstances we’re living under.

And so… Welcome to my new lil’ space on the internet. It’s the same, yet different. While I previously wrote about any and all parenting topics that I’ve experienced, I’ve decided that there are some categories that I’m leaving behind that don’t resonate with me and my writing anymore.

Some things we outgrow as time goes on, and this is applied to my writing as well.

The majority of the topics I wrote about will still be the same as they’re very much apart of my life, and there might be a few new topics I’ll be visiting as time goes on.

So buckle up with me on this new journey!