Winter Recap

February is such a short month, it sometimes sneaks right past us before we can properly get hold of it. February has a (not undeserved) reputation for being a miserable month, with gray cold days and snow and dark, and often this month finds us wondering why we haven't scheduled a getaway to a warmer clime. But this year's winter has been so mild, so sunny, so spring-like that we can't offer a single complaint. Except for the usual wonderment at the end of a month: where did all the time go?

It was Martin's birthday in early February, and then before we knew it, it was Valentine's Day. We've been doing lots of cooking and baking to keep warm. I have been doing some fancy roasts, some with complete success, and others, with...well, less success. Let's just say that slow roasting a beautiful full tray of vegetables for 12 hours is not recommended. But it has been fun to try out some new recipes. Max is very interested in cooking (and eating!), so it's fun for us to cook and bake together. 

We've been playing lots of games—we gave Martin three new games for his birthday, and then my parents sent him three as well. We really like Kids Carcassone. The other surprise favorite has been Rat a Tat Cat, which is a relatively simple card game. It's hard to find a game that Max likes as well as the rest of us (even though Max is extremely lucky in games and wins them without putting any effort into them). So both of these have been great finds. Also fun and very silly is Headbandz.

We've done some science projects at home too, one of which left a tell-tale burn in our kitchen table, a scorched shape kind of like an exclamation mark. I kind of like that we've etched a permanent memory into the wood. It's like the little dents in our dining room table from when Max was banging on it with his toy wooden hammer or the sharpie marks I've made in the doorway to mark their increasing height.

Also keeping my little pyromaniacs happy has been the burning of the Amaretti di Sarrono papers, as documented in the previous post. I remember my parents having a big box of these cookies, and how we rationed them out to last a long time. We're trying to do the same, although our desire to burn the paper sometimes encourages us to eat a couple of extra cookies.

Max has been working on a new comic book series, featuring a character called Mr. Vire. He is in a constant battle with the Evil Overlord, although their battles are very subdued, and the Mr. Vire character is always hoping to head home and sit down in his comfortable chair. My kind of superhero. The boys (all three) love comic books and comic strips. They eagerly await the New Yorker, just so they can read all the comics and make up their own captions for the drawings in the back. 

The boys continue to love their pottery/sculpture class. Otto really has a particular talent for it, and both boys really like it. They are also still taking a science class at Kids Science Labs that they really enjoy—the latest project has been to build a green house. Their houses are made of popsicle sticks and clay, or sometimes out of plastic cups, but they are discussing how to be aware of various aspects of the green technology in each class.

We've been reading a lot of chapter books, often in parallel with their audiobook counterpart. We listen to them while in the car, running errands or going to classes—and when we go to Indiana. And then we pick up where we left off in the actual book each night at bedtime. It works out really well, except that Martin misses big chunks and we have to recap for him. We just finished The Lightning Thief and started Book Five of Septimus Heap.

When there was finally a slushy snow day in the last weeks of February, we dutifully shuffled off to the park, but it was kind of slow going. We did go on a showshoe walk at the cabin, which was fun, and there was quite a bit of snow there when my parents visited. We haven't found a sledding spot near the cabin yet. 

I'm ready for spring at this point, just like the confused flowers. The latest cold bout has left me feeling colder than ever (of course, this is complicated by the fact that I have an actual cold and am therefore inclined to feel cold and project my coldness on everyone, i.e. insisting they all need a sweater or a coat or mittens, even though they insist they are warm enough. "A sweater is something you put on when your mother is cold." 

Luckily, it has mostly been sunny, so we have been enjoying the cold sunny days, taking hikes with Lilli. We spent a few weekends at the cabin. Martin had President's Day off, which was a surprise bonus (not really what I would have thought of as a major holiday, and we weren't expecting it at all, but when we found out he had it off, we jumped in the car and spent the long weekend in the country. We went on lots of walks, built lots of fires, played lots of games and made lots of food. We watched a couple of episodes of the old Pink Panther (the Peter Sellars version).

The boys and I gave Martin Rosetta Stone for German (he exclaimed, "German lessons! Just what I've always wanted!"). Hopefully it is obviously our declaration that we would learn German. We finally installed the program and have done a few lessons. Otto likes the "video game" aspect of it.


And last, but not least, it is a Leap Year! We celebrated Leap Day by heading to Navy Pier, where there was free parking, 29 cent admission to the Children's Museum, and free rides on the ferris wheel all day. It was a REALLY windy day, and when we went to line up for the ferris wheel, we learned it was closed because of the dangerous winds. The employee told us pretty casually that it might fall over. I certainly hope he was just throwing around his words loosely, because they did open it up again a couple of hours later, to only moderately less windy weather. I wasn't sure how keen I was to ride it, given that they were only able to use about half the ferris wheel, given the conditions. They would load up about ten cars, then let another ten go by empty, then load up another ten, then ten empty...all for balance, another employee told me. It made it a bit scary, but kind of an exciting adventure. The boys were totally up for it until we actually got on and started moving up. And from that point, there's nothing to do but grip each other tightly and hope for the best. The wind was very noticeable from the little open-air car, and the view—although beautiful on a cold, clear, sunny day—was not enough to assuage the worry that we would crash to our deaths...or worse, be trapped on the wheel forever. It moves so slowly it feels like it has stopped, which put Max into a bit of a panic. But we all breathed, focused on the tops of the buildings, and on each other, which somehow made us all feel steady and safe.