February

Note: This is mostly for my sake. Not even any pictures of everything I describe here.

It's been a relatively quiet month, which explains the relative quiet on the blog, I suppose. It has also been the coldest month of my entire life, even colder than last year.

To get through it, I've found myself relying heavily on the routines we started at the beginning of the school year (and detailed a bit here). Although I have still had days where I've had major cabin fever or days where I've cried simply looking at the 10-day forecast, for the most part we've managed to get ourselves through this month fairly well.

So, for the sake of remembering this once the next winter comes along, here's what we do each day.

Scheduled activities: Monday is Institute (I learn about church history while Joseph watches shows and plays with toys), Tuesday is exercise (actually I think I've missed it all month) and library story time (there is always a stamp at the end, and it is seriously the highlight of my week watching Joseph go up and approach the storyteller with his hand on his head to get his stamp) and piano lessons, Wednesday is Morning Out (usually crafts at the church), Thursday is swap day (three moms switch off watching their three boys once a week, and usually at least one is missing due to colds), Friday is also exercise and then lunch at the Institute.

So, that generally takes care of our mornings pretty well.

Home activities: Exercising together inside (usually I just turn on 20 minutes of embarrassing music and do aerobics and sometimes weights to it while Joseph either plays, participates, or cries), cleaning, napping (Joseph always, me often), building forts, coloring, painting, throwing the ball around, hide and seek, play dates (though actually I can hardly remember any this month), playing outside if the "feels like" temperature gets above 20 (happened twice), reading stories, puzzles, trains, race cars, stuffed animals, baths, cooking (he loves to help), potty training (going surprisingly well), and the occasional TV show and movie. This week has been a bit better at not making that our go-to, but generally there's been a combination of Daniel Tiger and some Pixar flick every day. Also, I think Joseph has worn red 80% of the days, and shorts 100% of the days (covered with pants if we need to go outside).

Evening activities: Dinner and cleanup, playing together til bedtime (usually with a lot of hide and seek), bedtime, lazing about. Except I haven't been lazing about at nights lately because I'm helping with a middle school musical, so I've been gone from 7-9 a few times the past few weeks accompanying them. And when there isn't that, there's book club or Relief Society cooking group or learn-cool-stuff club, so there's still plenty to look forward to. But often I just sit and read books I've read plenty of times. Or check blogs for the umpteenth time (yeah, I do that plenty throughout the day too). Some nights I try and read textbooks (I think 3 times this whole year, which pretty much should keep me relevant, right?). Meanwhile, Kevin has a paper that has he's working on with a deadline that is about to get extended for the third time, which means he's been able to spend every single evening polishing it and finding more results. Lucky guy. We also sometimes play games with people or watch nostalgic movies from the library (our laptop Blu-Ray player refuses to play any Blu-Ray made after 2012 so that makes it hard to watch newer stuff sometimes).

Overall, it's a pretty calm life that is about as happy as we make it. But we are ready for spring.