Talkin’ about school stuff

Today I was reminded of a fact that I learn and relearn every year when spring is around the corner. It is a fact that is a bit embarrassing. I am a grown up person with grown up responsibilities, after all. For my entire demeanor to be so dependent on the weather seems almost juvenile to me. Like, oh, boo-boo. The skies are gray and it’s cold outside and wet and crappy. So what. Get ahold of yourself and look on the bright side.

Only, I can’t.

I generally cannot stand being inside all day, and neither can anyone in my immediate family. This can be a wonderful thing (like during spring, summer, and fall, when we are outside for a good 12 hours a day) or a very very bad thing (winter blues x 4… or 5?). I guess it’s not all that bad. We entertain ourselves and each other well enough. But it always feels like just getting by. Waiting for the weather to shift. Because once we are back outside, perspective comes rushing back. OH!!! This is what happiness feels like! Hooray!

 I mean, Oliver is GALLOPING, for goodness sake. All because of a little sunshine! Well, and because he is Oliver.

At Emil’s 6-month check-up, I patiently nodded as the RN suggested that my exclusively-breastfed baby might need vitamin D supplements because “most breastfed babies don’t get enough vitamin D from breast milk alone.” But I think she doesn’t know us. She doesn’t know that I push Oliver and Emil in the stroller facing the sunshine (or in the carrier- even MORE sunshine!) the entire walk to Milo’s preschool, then back again every day. She doesn’t know that if I don’t do this I will slip into a deep dark sunlight-deprived depression… oh, she doesn’t know. This is one kid who will not develop rickets, for heavens sake.

This was a good day. This was the same day Emil received the old quadra-shot craziness added onto the old rotovirus cocktail which seems to make him shut out the rest of the world for the next few hours and sleep peacefully in the stroller for two entire hours… even as the wind tried to blow him away down the sidewalk without us and I ran after him like a maniac in cowboy boots and a dress while Milo and Oliver stood, mouths agape, still as stones and just as helpful. Even as our door blew open and Proudie escaped, running down the street quite the opposite way, and around the corner before we even knew she was gone. Yep. It was still a good day.

We picked up pizza at the corner pizza place on our way back from collecting Milo from preschool. We ate most of it while walking almost comically slowly back home. A shuffle of a walk, really. A bite of pizza, a stop to look at a branch. Watching the construction vehicles. Talking to the mail carrier and Milo commenting on her new hairstyle (!) and pointing at “Dr. Claw” in the sky. 

And by the time we got home, it was mostly eaten and little boys lost interest in such boring things as filling their bellies, and found much more important things to do…

… like swinging from the trees and drawing chalk footprint pathways leading “miles and miles” or so it seemed. 

But no matter the miles, these pathways always, in sunshine or gray skies, lead back here.