March is mentally the hardest month of the year for me (June is a close second). Growing up in Atlanta, you could count on everyone leaving for spring break the second week of March, heading either to ski or to the beach, and returning to temperatures where one could spend the whole day outside without a coat. By the end of the month, the sweaters of winter were back in storage and the main weather concern was how high the pollen count was every day. The phrase “in like a lion, out like a lamb” was correct in the Southern states, where we never really had winter anyway.
Unfortunately, this expectation of March is so ingrained in me that I will never be able to accept any other reality, despite living for five and a half years in a country where seasons take longer to change when they’re supposed to heat up. March and June always suck because they are always still the previous season - they do not care at all about your expectations of them. Amsterdam, rudely, decided to fuck with me even more this year and gave us a weekend of truly glorious spring weather just so I would be even more convinced that spring is on the way.
We’re going on day four of cloudless blue skies, warm enough to wear just a sweatshirt and leggings in the afternoon. The sun is setting after 6:00 pm and is up by 7:30 am and we haven’t even sprung forward yet. The tulips are everywhere, ridiculously cheap and thus overflowing in my house. I took my giant puffer coat, the sleeping bag one, to the dry cleaners for its deep clean and I know for a fact that I will simply not allow myself to wear it again until November, whatever the forecast says. I am aware this is insane. I will be very cold on all of my commutes (my bike seat was frozen this morning as I went to yoga in a sweater and my freaking Barbour jacket, no scarf). Unfortunately, my brain has now just calibrated that this weekend of perfect weather is the baseline of all weather for the rest of the month and into April, which couldn’t be more incorrect. Oh well.
We’ve gone out on our normal morning walks every day, letting the Bug toddle along in the park pointing out ducks and loudly exclaiming over the drainage grates, warning us to watch out and walk around them. And four days in a row now, after tiring herself out with her explorations, we’ve plopped her back into her stroller and had her immediately fall asleep. The Bug has pretty much moved to one nap per day, and has resisted stroller naps as she’s gotten older, but every day this weekend she’s snuck in a little morning cat nap in the March sun, her face upturned like a flower seeking warmth. Wanting her to sleep as long as she can, I’ve walked more steps this weekend than I have in a long time, letting her soak in the vitamin D and the crisp fresh air as her long eyelashes rest against her cheeks. She’s woken up with more energy and happier after each nap, almost jumping out of the stroller to run, limbs flailing as her excitement for the day can no longer be contained in her suddenly big kid body.
There’s something about March though that really feels like the precipice - it’s like all of the hunkering down coziness of winter has built up in us a desire to spring into action. We might need a bit more sunshine to make the springing actually occur, but it’s closer to happening than we think.
There are milestones that everyone talks about - when she walks, her first word, her first toddler meltdown. These firsts are the ones you look for, trying to claim them before they really happen (a gassy smile at 6 weeks versus the first time she smiles on purpose at 12 weeks, for example). This week, I was bowled over with the sight of a first that took me completely off guard.
Dylan took her to an indoor “soft play” place to burn some energy out while I got a facial after my solo parenting.
Sidenote: the term “soft play” is really common in the UK and Europe to describe an indoor play place with ball pits and slides, etc, but for the life of me whenever I read it or say it something dirty pops into my head despite my mom voice yelling at me that it’s a perfectly normal term. Am I wrong? Isn’t it a weird term?? Someone validate me that it’s weird to say “I’m heading to soft play”.
He was texting me updates, mostly that she was having meltdowns because she wanted to play on the big kid slide but there were so many big kids that he couldn’t get up there to help her and she couldn’t do it on her own. I responded “it’s hard to be little when you just want to be big” and put my phone away. 90 minutes later, skin glowing and fully rejuvenated, I clicked on a video he’d sent.
Our Bug sat at the top of the big kid slide, looked at her daddy, and pushed off down the slide by herself. She lifted her shoes so she wouldn’t get stuck, and went down with the biggest grin on her face. It was the first time she slid without someone holding her by the waist, pulling her down against the friction of her heels digging into the slide.
Apparently, when you want to be big you just decide you’re ready to be big.
It’s like this winter is suddenly coming to a close, our baby days with the Bug, and in its place this kid is pushing up out of the ground, ready to face the sun.
Everything ends. Everything begins.
Worm Moon
by Mary Oliver
I.
In March the earth remembers its own name.
Everywhere the plates of snow are cracking.
The rivers begin to sing. In the sky
the winter stars are sliding away; new stars
appear as, later, small blades of grain
will shine in the dark fields.
And the name of every place
is joyful.
II.
The season of curiosity is everlasting
and the hour for adventure never ends,
but tonight
even the men who walked upon the moon
are lying content
by open windows
where the winds are sweeping over the fields,
over water,
over the naked earth,
into villages, and lonely country houses, and the vast cities
III.
because it is spring;
because once more the moon and the earth are eloping -
a love match that will bring forth fantastic children
who will learn to stand, walk, and finally run
over the surface of earth; who will believe, for years,
that everything is possible.
IV.
Born of clay,
how shall a man be holy;
born of water,
how shall a man visit the stars;
born of the seasons,
how shall a man live forever?
V.
Soon
the child of the red-spotted newt, the eft,
will enter his life from the tiny egg.
On his delicate legs
he will run through the valleys of moss
down to the leaf mold by the streams,
where lately white snow lay upon the earth
like a deep and lustrous blanket
of moon-fire,
VI.
and probably
everything
is possible.
What I’m Reading
I finished the novel High Dive, which was…fine. I wouldn’t recommend it. I’ve started Maeve Binchy’s Circle of Friends because we’re heading to Dublin for a long weekend this weekend and I was told that reading her work is like reading every cozy and warm hope you have for what Ireland will be when you go visit without being cheesy and stereotypical.
Elena Ferrante’s novel My Brilliant Friend is on the NYT’s list of best books of the 21st century - written in Italian and translated into English, the first of the Neopolitan Series has been on my TBR list forever. I realized our library had the audiobook version of the first two in the series, and I devoured it. Ferrante is a pen name, and it isn’t confirmed whether the writer is a man or a woman, but I cannot imagine she isn’t a woman - the way she writes the all consuming obsessive, loving, competitive, insane nature of adolescent female friendship is genius. I loved the first and am very into the second so far.
- gave me a little shoutout this week! Hi to everyone who is here now as a result :).
Her posts are awesome resources for parenting littles.
What I’m Watching
Because we are millennial adults, we obviously still use our parents’ Netflix log in. We were temporarily kicked off of it at the end of 2024, so we’re now catching up on things everyone talked about that we missed. Nobody Wants This was absolutely hilarious. Connected to last week’s what I’m watching - Kristen Bell has RANGE.
What I’m Loving
Dylan has made a “Wisconsin style” grasshopper literally every day this week - which is just a boozy thin mint milkshake. It is spectacular and the color is so springy and pretty!
I made a springy pasta of broccoli rabe and Italian sausage - absolutely delicious.
I would tell you that here in the states, Oma and I were by the pool all day Saturday, but that would be mean! Can’t wait to see y’all!!!