Month-by-month: February

Off to Texas

Safely out of the expensive and crowded holiday travel window, I got some cheap plane tickets and took Annika and Lukas to visit the fam in Texas (on what I fondly hope is the last solo flight with both kids until they're like ten and six at least!). They were very well-behaved, but the sheer amount of crap I had to drag through airports and on and off of planes was exhausting, and if it weren't for the kindness of strangers, I might not have recovered yet. But anyway ... So we stayed at my mom's house, mostly just hanging around doing nothing, which was pretty awesome. Both kids ended up sleeping in the bed with me by the middle of the night, meaning I barely got any sleep at all, but our agenda wasn't very taxing, heh. Mom and I watched the entire second season of Downton Abbey, we got to see Aunt L, Uncle J & Aunt J, my own aunt and uncle, and some other family, we had a great day visiting a little zoo in Gainesville (Frank Buck Zoo) and then hitting a park and going out for lunch, and Annika for the first time noticed the "princess castle" on the Decatur square -- aka the county courthouse -- so we walked up there together and went inside while Lukas slept in the stroller. Good times all around! And while we were gone, R. put in 15-hour days painting the living room, entryway, and guest bedroom! The burnt-silly-putty color is goooooooone! Celebramos! (Yes, it does require that many exclamation points.) So, a very successful week-plus all around.

A near-crisis, narrowly averted

For some time, Annika had been talking about the "hundred day" party at school -- it's a big thing, they have a party lunch, they all bring 100 of something to count; it's part celebration of being able to count to 100, and part marking 100 days of school thus far in the year. But we didn't know when it was, exactly ... and when the information sheet finally went up, it was of course scheduled for the very day we were to be traveling back from Texas. I told Annika, and she was out of her mind with misery. I felt bad, and started looking up different flights, change fees, etc. -- and it couldn't be done for less than about $1000, so we were SOL. But then I thought of one more thing -- and feeling like the biggest jerk on the planet, I emailed her teacher to ask if the party could be moved to the next day. I apologized in advance for even asking, and qualified it with several assurances that of course we'd understand if it was a no go, she's only ONE student in a full class, there are disappointments in life, etc. ... and within the hour, the teacher had emailed back to say, "Sure, no problem, we'll move it to Thursday." Ridiculous amounts of happiness (plus effusive thanks on my part!) ensued ... and it does seem that the hundred-day party was a smashing success, so I'm glad she did get to go. Even if it did make me seem like one of those "Anything for my speshul princess!!" types ... oh my.)

Valentine's Day

So less than a week later, it was Valentine's Day. In a rare flash of forethought, I had scooped up some Spider-Man cards and little heart-printed gift bags at Michael's a few weeks ago, so Annika and I made heart-shaped cookies and frosted them with pink icing. She signed her name to all the cards (I usually prefer homemade to store-bought, but time and logistics were not with us this year, besides did I mention she is obsessed with Spider-Man? So I let her have it), and we assembled the treat bags with one card, one Spidey tattoo, and one cookie each. Those kids better have eaten those cookies, dammit ...

Move it, move it

Annika is getting better and better at bike riding; she's good at steering, she can go pretty fast, and she's learned how to brake with the pedals. She's less good at watching where she's going ... but that'll come in time. We hope. :-) And meanwhile, she loves to go with me to the gym; this one takes kids as young as six weeks in the Kids' Club, so on days we're home by ourselves, the three of us will often go to the gym for a bit. I'm really glad she enjoys it, and I'm also glad to get the chance to model healthy behavior; R. and I both run and work out regularly, and we've always talked about it as "getting fit and healthy," and emphasized how much better it makes us feel. We want both the kids to have good associations with fitness and physical activity, and it's never too early to start sharing that with them.

Lukas's First Mini-Sauce

One Friday in February, some email chatter led to a spontaneous Saturday Sauce. We loaded up all our crap and drove down on Saturday afternoon, rocked out Saturday night (both kids sleeping like logs -- awesome!), and back home Sunday midday. Annika did NOT want to leave -- she told me at one point, "I have an idea! I'll stay here, and you and Daddy go home to get our stuff, and come back, and we can live here!" Lukas, for his part, still doesn't really care where he is, as long as somebody is holding him ... which, with six adults to one baby, was pretty much all the time we were there. Heh. One other development was that we realized with stone certainty that we are going to have to buy a bigger automobile -- the Prius was stuffed to the absolute gills, and even then, we had to have T & D take our guitars and the keyboard and stands. We knew this -- we need something that seats six or seven -- but trying to go somewhere with any amount of equipment made it clear that we also need more cargo capacity. Uggggh.

The cirrrrcle of liiiiiiiiife

A major topic of discussion this month: Death. Going to Texas and not seeing Kelly reminded Annika that he had passed away last year, and then the good dog Wilson (M&H's Brittany) died, and so we've been talking a lot about the subject. She wants to know who we know that has died, and where they go when they die, and when all of the rest of us will die. She doesn't seem especially disturbed by it, but she's clearly thinking about it a lot off and on, which I think is pretty normal for her age. My instinct as always is to shield her from this kind of thing, but that is A) impossible and B) a bad move to even try, so we're just trying to be as honest as possible and reassure her that although every living thing dies eventually, it is likely to be a very long time -- waaaay after she's already a grownup -- until we go. She seems pretty OK with that.