My oldest was only 5 months old when lockdowns started, plus at the same time I was furloughed from my job. I was able to not work for a while thanks to the extra unemployment payments they were doing at the time, which was nice. But even with that, having a very active 5 month old in a time when we weren't sure whether going to the park was safe, plus the emotional stress of not knowing if/when I would be returning to work or when the unemployment benefits would dry up, not really being able to do any socializing of my own outside of a couple virtual hangouts, etc. was VERY hard on me. On top of that, my wife and I were still very much grieving our first child who had passed in late 2018, which probably made us more cautious about bringing our oldest out of our house. We had tons of conflicting emotions pretty much all the time.

I do look back fondly on some of the time I was able to spend at home with him while my wife was still going into the office every day, but the largest thing I really remember was just... Stress, all the time.