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Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Prelude to Spring

It's days like today, when I'm so totally ready for spring, that I'm glad I live where I do because we had a beautiful prelude-to-spring day here. It was a balmy 57°F, the sun felt warm, the breeze was gentle, and the long-silent playground echoed with children's laughter.

Four of those laughing children were my own (the fifth was at her organ lesson). We soaked up every possible minute at the playground before coming home to make dinner.

My cousins—Michelle and Shannon—meanwhile, were on Facebook comparing temperatures where they live—in North Dakota and Idaho, respectively—and although I know that I tolerated living in such cold places for years, seeing those -17°F and -7°F (again respectively) temperatures made me shudder.

At the same time, it's days like today, when I'm still wearing fuzzy socks and a jacket to the park, that I'm glad to be moving back to the south. I don't think I ever quite adjusted to the cold weather up here. The playground was full of children—and parents—in t-shirts and shorts, and though I know that I have run outside to play on the first warm day towards the end of winter wearing similar attire, today I stood out a bit in my puffy jacket and fuzzy socks.


Alexander loved playing at the park. He's so good at getting around with his cast that he was scaling staircases and sliding down stairs so quickly I was afraid he'd break another arm (which reminds me, I took Zoë and Alexander to the library and to the park on Monday and while at the park he was climbing this huge rock wall so well—with just one good arm—it was insane).

Zoë and Benjamin had a great time running around, playing tag with other children at the park, and taking breaks to catch Alexander at the bottom of the slide.

Rachel joined us after play practice. She was late because there were a couple of stray dogs at the school so she and her friends corralled them in their bike-parking area and their director called animal control (which in our town is just the police, I guess).

She was quite proud of her adventure. So proud, in fact, that she started tonight's round of "What was your favourite part of the day?" at the dinner table.

"What was your favourite part of the day, Zoë?" she asked.

It was the park.

"Interesting. What was your favourite part of the day, Benjamin?"

It was also the park.

The littlest two tend to suffer a bit from proximity bias and often will just say the most recent thing that they did.

"Fun. Miriam, what was your favourite part of the day?"

Organ.

"Neat. Mom?"

She was trying to move the conversation along pretty quickly, leaving no room for elaboration.

"Going to the park, I guess."

"Cool, cool, cool. Dad?"

"This food."

The littlest two tend to suffer a bit from proximity bias, it's true, but the biggest one of all suffers from proximity bias the worst. His answer is often "this food." His days have been grueling more often than not lately, which I'm sure contributes to his answer.

"Great. Now I can tell you about my favourite part of the day!"

"I thought that might be coming," Andrew chuckled.

"Hey!" Rachel said.

"She had quite the adventure!" I said, coming to her defense.

"It's true!" Rachel said.

"It's not every day you get a call from your child saying they'll be a little late coming home because they're just waiting for the police to get there..."

Intrigued, Andrew stopped teasing her and let her tell her exciting story.

Between inversions/cold weather we haven't been outside much at all so we've all been suffering from a bit of cabin fever. I'm glad we could have weather nice enough to give us a small sense of adventure today!

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