Everyone everywhere is over February, and I get it. I’m done with the weather too, but in all other respects I have had a lovely start to the month. For starters, it was my birthday. The day itself was delightfully normal. A standard work day when everything went right. But over the weekend David and I got a date night – we got steak and finally saw The Last Jedi – and the kids spent the night with his parents. This was our first date in months! The next day we had a family dinner to celebrate several adult birthdays, and I got some lovely and perfect gifts for me, and have been eating very well. Lots of chocolate has been consumed. I am also working through my birthday list which feels good.

It’s almost like I’m pregnant, with the amount of nesting I’ve been doing lately. Maybe it’s just pre-spring fever. Regardless, the house is quite clean and organized, and I’ve been steadily chipping away at small maintenance tasks that have been nagging at me. Next week I have a friend coming to stay for a week, and before then I’m going to totally fix up the guest room, which is where our old baby supplies are currently stored. It’s time to send those on their way.

I’m preoccupied with Lent starting in just a couple of days! My first as an almost-Catholic. The process of conversion is really stepping into high gear. Fasting and ashes on Wednesday, meatless Fridays, I’m giving up sweets (hold me), day of prayer on Saturday, two masses on Sunday for two different Rites, and soon I have to go to confession (hold me again). In addition to that I’ve got a devotional I’d like to follow, plus I started a somewhat ambitious felt needlepoint craft which is supposed to be for Lent. One ornament for each day, going through the life of Jesus as in the gospel of Matthew. I’m trying to remember that the point is the spirit of sacrifice and penance, not the letter of the law. It’s hard to keep all this new stuff in my  mind.

The kids are just being darling and so much fun lately. I took Liam to the doctor last week for a check-up and as we waited, he as usual played with a pair of disposable gloves. We ended up bringing them home and then he asked me to fill one up with water. At first I said no, but then I remembered clearly that when I was young I used to fill up plastic snack bags with water, close them with a rubber band, and call them my pet waters. I’d carry my pet around with me and talk to it. So I filled up the glove for Liam, told him about my pet waters, and he promptly named his “Schniff” and started talking to it. He carried it around with him all day.

I also remember that my dad told me not to bring my pet water inside, but I brought it into the bathroom to leave it overnight. It worried me to think about it outside in the dark without me. He found my pet water and he popped it because I had disobeyed, and I cried. Well, after one day Liam popped Schniff himself. I made him another one, and he popped it too. So apparently he didn’t bond with his pet water in the same way I did.