Don’t get me wrong, Covid has been miserable in sooo many ways; masks, seeing the dark side of people, limited activities and school functions. I missed my two littles getting their Christmas program this year. My outer two are going to get confirmed and first communion this year and it will be weird. Limited family members and subdued celebrations. Vacations stopped or dramatically changed. Sports being stopped and resuming in weird ways. I don’t wish to re-enter the nightmare that is Covid.

But – as many have pointed out, there have been some upsides to Covid shutting us down for a year. More family time, more intentional family dinners, or time to binge some great shows on Netflix. Neighbors out playing together as a larger bubble.

My favorite upside is the streaming. Because spectators are drastically limited, coaches, teachers, and parents have turned to streaming kids sports. For people like us, where grandparents live far away and can’t make it to activities regularly, streaming has been a great adaption. My dad would watch his granddaughters play softball on cold winter nights. My mom would send me texts after Jiggs’ swim meet. Mike’s mom would was able to watch Bug pitch which she hasn’t gotten to see much of before.

When Peanut went to tour a high school, her guide told us how her Italian teacher just recorded the lesson he already was streaming so that she could watch it later. The technical adaptations that came along for this Covid ride have been nothing short of amazing. I can’t imagine this 15 years ago before wifi was rare and no one had this technology in their pockets, classrooms.

As my three daughters will play on 4 softball teams this spring/summer, you can imagine that us parents will miss some games this year. Since Dad is coaching Bug this year, he will miss many of Jiggs games as they play the same night. Hopefully we can talk someone into streaming these games so we can watch them later.

I am excited to re-open and be able to play games without masks, have all kids in schools again, and so on. But I do hope that some of the positives like recording classes so kids can stay home when they are sick, but not miss the entire lesson or play sports and let parents “be in two places at once” continue.