Feeling Springy

March is an antsy month. It starts getting tantalizingly warmer in the daytime but it’s still uncomfortably chilly in the wee hours. Maybe I get antsy because it’s the end of a whole winter of too much time cooped up. Maybe the wind gets to me. Probably all of the above. Whatever the reason, I always feel ready for change in March.  Last March I got to start running again for the first time after Rose was born. That was a sufficiently exciting and large change.

Rose is looking for a new jungle gym.

This year, we don’t have a big change happening in March, but we are at least preparing for a big change. The time has come at last: this week we officially started house-hunting! For our very own HOUSE! I’ve always thought it would be so fun to go house-hunting and be able to 1. see a bunch of different houses and then 2. choose one to be my very own. This is yet another Shaina-ideal that has been smooshed. Crunched. Splatted. Maybe it’s just Grandview, but this house-hunting thing has turned out to be hard work, and kind of stressful! I could go on (and on), but I’ll just leave it at that—finding a nice, affordable house in our town is uphill work.

I was telling my dear, patient mother all about my demolished ideal that house-hunting would be a breeze, and she said, “well, here’s one ideal that won’t fail you: Rose is cute!” I can count on that. And that’s where the pictures come in. Some day in the near future I hope to be able to post pictures of our new house, but we haven’t found one of those yet. So I’d better stick to the reliable ideal of child-cuteness for now.

This week we had some lovely warm days around here. Friday afternoon we went to the park together. I had fun playing with my camera settings.

Jeff and Jay played fetch and went exploring by the train tracks.

Rose practiced walking. She’s getting better at it every day! The bumpy grass was a pretty tough challenge for her, but she did pretty well.

This week we also had our first experience with gasping, rasping children late at night. Croup? Congestion? Who knows what it was, but thanks to all my pals who’ve dealt with this before, I knew one remedy: cold air! So one night Rose and I spent half an hour bundled up in the cold. It was amazing. The next night it was Jay’s turn to wake up gasping, so out he went. Amazing again. Tired again. Now my head is stuffy. Maybe that will calm my ansty-ness for a day or two…