Launch a Website in a Day? In Quarantine? With a Preschooler at Home? No Problem.

If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen my stories last month when we were in quarantine.

My husband had a cold and got a positive result on a home test. He sequestered away in our bedroom while I held down the fort with Emmie and our dog. 

At one point, in a fit of delirious paranoia, I worried that our dog might infect us. He’d sleep in the bedroom at night with my husband, breathing in the Omicron haze and then spend the day cuddling with me and Emmie. 

Not surprisingly, that didn’t happen.

If you who haven’t yet experienced the fun of quarantine, the first thing that happens is your home becomes a command hub for about an hour. 

You need to call or notify everyone you’ve had contact with in the previous few days. Then you spend another 25 minutes trying to figure out the regulations and when you can test out. Then you game out what happens if you all get infected and who will be able to venture out first. 

Then you try an order a bunch of groceries online and see that they are all backed up and delayed. That’s when you realise the whole damn city is quarantined.

Once we got our bearings I remembered I had a Launch In A Day website in two days. The client had booked last year and paid in full. 

In our kick off call the previous week she explained she had a bunch of stuff going on and was really glad we were getting it done the following week because she couldn’t dedicate any time to it after that.

Shit!

A launch day is intense. I need to be extremely focused for six hours straight. I’m kind of brain dead afterwards and I purposely plan nothing but administrative tasks for the following day.

How was I going to get this done with Emmie at home?!? We’ve gotten pretty lax with screen time since Covid started, but I couldn’t park her in front of an iPad for six hours!

Luckily, the gods were on my side. 

Emmie has recently really started to enjoy an audio book series about a fox and sheep that travel the world. My husband had ordered some new moulding clay which arrived the morning of the launch. I was transparent about the situation with my client and she was totally understanding.

Emmie was a champ. There was plenty of iPad watching but she also spent a good amount of time playing with clay, drawing and listening to her audio books. So maybe I’m not doomed to burn for all eternity in bad mom hell.

I was really mad the first couple of days. I really don’t take feeling trapped very well (does anyone?) 

In the scheme of things, though, we really haven’t had it that bad; no older kids to home school, no one seriously ill. I know complaining is kind of obnoxious, but we can only live our own lives.

Fortunately, I was much more relaxed after the launch was over. Under the circumstances, the day went smoothly and the client was happy with the website (you can see it here.)

I surrendered to the situation and was surprised to find that it turned out to be some nice bonding and down time for me and my kiddo - and our dog! 

We watched movies, baked a cake, did a lot of drawing, and I knew the world would be there waiting when we got out. Quarantine with her now that she’s five is also a lot easier than it was when she was three. 

Luckily, we were all able to test out a lot faster than we thought, five days later.

Now everyone at our preschool is testing positive, so this ride aint’ over yet.

Would you like to launch your website in a day? I can help with that.