Life before lockdown was hard with SN DD. High functioning but teen years and their impacts hit hard.
Lockdown meant she lost a lot of her hard won social skills and was removed from the sport she needed.
DH and I still worked FT albeit mostly from home. I switched roles internally the day before lockdown 1, again 2 months later, again 3 months after that, and again 3 months later again. And with 2 of those, I needed to go into the office and parliament at various points. And all completely different topics to what I was doing and had done in the past, and the 2 needing office/parliament time were urgently needed. So plenty of stress.
DH and dd wore me down so we got ddog in early 2021. Who is fine and they (well, he) mostly do as promised on walking and Pooh picking in garden. But she does restrict us going away and doesn't do well (to the point of needing significant vet treatment) when in kennels so needs to come with us essentially.
But - dd was able to set a home gym routine and spend a lot of time focussed on specific skills. So her sport improved and she was selected for regional and national squads as restrictions eased. And she had recovery time for a shoulder injury that had plagued her so was able to go back to her original sport and compete in worlds once more before deciding to dedicate herself to the team sport.
Her school was good about keeping learning going and while she fell behind on some things, not as badly as many others did.
DH got a new job during the lockdowns - moving from private consultancy under US management to the public sector. So still very busy but no longer needing to travel to the UK weekly and constantly under pressure for him and all his teams (he managed 300 in 10 regional teams) to achieve unrealistic targets.
I also finally managed to get a promotion last year (my 13th time trying for this jump) - which I am loving despite the extra pressure. And while I was happy where they put me initially, and making progress, I finally got the chance to move abroad this autumn (I've wanted to for over 20 years but between better candidates or wrong time for family reasons, it never happened) - so I am on the EU mainland for the past 3 weeks and loving it! I will get a proper apartment before Christmas if lease checks are ok next week - which will be my first time living abroad and first time ever living alone. DH will visit once dd has completed leaving cert exams in June (A level equivalent?) and she is trying to decide what to do but actually has in mind 3 Belgian clubs for a year out as an option. So may voluntarily spend time in my presence!
Life, even before my move, is monumentally different to before covid. Lots of bits are not so great but some of those were starting anyway and covid just solidified them. Some things are better. And it definitely resulted in opportunities and chances that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
But because of how things happened, we were phenomenally busy during lockdown and never had the reset or slowdown that many others had. (Absolutely not all - we were busy but not frontline and facing it head on). So I don't have great projects to point to or the list of books I read or fab new recipes/skills I learned - it was work, cooking, housework and essential shopping mostly. And managing dd's needs without any supports available.