Happy Leap Year! You have an extra day of being alive this year, try to enjoy it in some small way. Now go leap!

(Profuse apologies to my downstairs neighbors who had to endure five attempts to get this shot.)

This morning it was -21C (-6F) and it was just the kind of weather where you wish you could bury yourself under the blankets and not come out until Spring.

When Hayley and I stepped out of our front door, a blast of cold air hit my face. My eyes watered and my nostrils froze shut in less than one minute. All I could think was how sick I am of Winter, how I hate being cold, and could Spring please move it along.

And Hayley looked around with a big smile and said, “It is such a beautiful day! Don’t you think so Mommy? It’s so nice out!”

Who is this child and are they sure she came from my uterus?

Then again, the charm of the day wore off as we were waiting in the school yard for the bell to ring. She turned to me wearily and said, “Mommy I’m tired of the cold and the snow.” When I told her it’s supposed to snow tonight (AGAIN), she heaved a huge and annoyed sigh and kicked some snow in disappointment.

Now that’s more like it.

Breanna was just nibbling on some food that she had leftover from an earlier snack. Since supper is in about 20 minutes (the smell of Butter Chicken is KILLING me I am so hungry ohmygod), I said that maybe she should put it down for now and have it later.

“Okay Mum. I’ll put it down right here.”

1. When did she get big enough to call me MUM for god’s sake?
2. When did she learn to speak in complete sentences complete with contractions?

I still remember when “Mama” and “Dada” were exciting, even when they were just sounds and didn’t mean anything in particular. My little baby is growing up.

Tonight I went for the easy meal and pulled out some french fries, frozen fish sticks (though in my defense, they’re really GOOD fish sticks, they get very crispy and tasty), and popped those in the oven while making some vegetables on the stove.

The meal went over well. Hayley ate all her fish, half her fries and about half her vegetables. Afterwards, she wanted half a bagel for dessert, which is odd but definitely doable. Breanna did quite well too, leaving only half a fish stick, about half the fries, and all the vegetables that weren’t peas (her favorite). For dessert, she wanted ice cream, and since ice cream counts as dairy (even her doctor said a little is fine because she doesn’t drink milk) I gave her a small bowl of it.

Then I went to take her plate away to start clearing the table while she ate dessert and holy hell, did she get mad. “No! Mine! My plate!” Fine then, ma’am, there’s your plate.

And she sat there, taking a bite of fish stick, a spoonful of chocolate ice cream, a bite of french fry, and spoonful of ice cream, on and on.

It was at that point that I came to the glorious conclusion that kids? They are GROSS.

Sometimes it’s the more laid-back weekends that are the most pleasant of all.

On Saturday, we started things off with one of my favorite weekend traditions when George hit the kitchen and made us bacon and eggs for breakfast. We don’t do it every single weekend, but it’s pretty frequent. Hayley had asked if we could go for a family walk but when I checked the weather forecast, I saw it was pretty darn cold on Saturday and that Sunday was promising to be warmer so we decided to put it off until then.

Later in the day someone came over to work on music for a couple of hours so I hung out with the girls in the living room doing some drawing; Hayley is getting really good at it and Breanna likes to name all her doodles.

Unfortunately, Breanna was a little cranky because she’s dealing with a cold that is driving her crazy, especially since we can’t seem to turn off the tap inside her nose. She required a great deal of cuddling right at the time I needed to start supper so she sat on my hip with her head on my shoulder while I made the rice and vegetables to go with the butter chicken we were having.

I was on my own for part of the evening but I didn’t mind since I spent a great deal of it poking around on Flickr and catching up on a few things I wanted to do. I ended up getting to bed entirely too late, sometime after 1 am. Whoops!

I ended up sleeping until 9 am, so that helped with the late bedtime. Then, George and the kids ended up in the living room watching something or other, and I decided to do something I hadn’t done in an eternity – I made my coffee and retreated to the bedroom to read. I’m about 200 pages into The Other Boleyn Girl and I am *loving* it when I’m not busy being irate at the way things were in that era. I managed to lie in bed, reading about 75 pages which was awesome. (In fact, as soon as I finish this entry, I think I must go read some more!)

After a quick lunch, we held true to our promise to Hayley and we bundled up for our family walk. It was a beautiful day and wasn’t very cold at all. We were out for almost an hour and a half, and Breanna walked the entire way except for coming up the stairs when we got back home. We walked around our neighborhood and found an enormous snow bank where the plows had been pushing snow out of a parking lot. Hayley had a blast climbing up and sliding back down. Even Breanna went a few times, though we had to carry her up and position her properly before letting her go. Hell, even I went down the hill once, despite a lack of snowpants and I got a cold, wet butt for my efforts (hi, pervy Google searching people!), but it was fun so I didn’t care. We’re hoping to go sledding in a couple of weeks, that should be a blast.

The rest of today was just a typical Sunday where we try to keep things low-key and get ready for starting back into the week. Never mind that it’s 9:45 pm and Hayley’s still awake despite needing to be up at 6:30 tomorrow morning (I’m not looking forward to waking her up for breakfast!). Breanna’s snoring exceptionally loudly over the monitor, poor little thing, but at least she’s sleeping. George is watching “The Simpsons”. And now I’m going to do the tiniest bit of Flickr-ing before returning to England in the 16th century and see what lies ahead for Henry and Mary and Anne.

I hope your weekend was as pleasant as ours!

Sherry: Okay, give me some space here in the kitchen please. I’m going to make supper now.
Breanna: SUPPER!
Sherry: Yes! I have to get the fish ready to put in the oven.
Breanna: (Touching the oven door) Ouch! OW! OW! OUCH! Hot! Ow!
Sherry: … The oven isn’t on yet.
Breanna: Oh.

*******

This morning when Hayley woke up, there was no drama involved in trying to get her out of bed. She still didn’t eat much breakfast, but she was cheerful because she was looking forward to doing all their Valentine activities in class and getting her cards from her classmates. She had also filled out three of the leftover cards to give to George, myself, and Breanna. (Breanna’s had a little beetle driving a car and it said, “you’re as cute as a bug!” – Breanna loved it so much that she spent the morning saying “cute a bug!” and if she misplaced the card she would panic and ask, “where my bug?!”) It was nice but the biggest smile came later, after she was gone to school. While placing something on her dresser I found the envelope she had been using to hide the cards from us.

On it, she had written, “To me famele” with a big heart.

I love phonetic writing.

*******

On this 14th of February, I hope that everyone is having a very happy VD.

No, that joke never gets old.

I am swamped with work today, but if you’re looking for some meal planning ideas, I have a review up for a new meal planning website.

Awesome! Something good coming to Fox.

I have a piece of paper here on my desk with a bunch of scrawled notes about things I want to post to my blog, but in the meantime, I do have a book review up for a wonderful book called The Sky Isn’t Visible From Here – and if you haven’t read it, you really should (that goes for the review AND the book!).

It’s -17C without the wind, Hayley’s home sick from school, and Breanna’s nose is stuffed up as well. YAY! I think I need another coffee…