7QT: February Happenings

 They say February is the longest month.  Everyone is feeling rather cooped up and sick of winter, its coats, its cold, its grayness.  Homeschooling attempts are half-hearted and limp.  Arguments and crying are very frequent. Lips and hands are tired of being chapped.  We want spring!

1. We have been bird watching and feeding this snowy month.   We finally bought a bag of seed from a great little shop in our town called Birdwatchers.  We sprinkle the seed on the snow for the ground feeders -- juncos and sparrows -- and we have this
Birdscapes Clear Window Feeder  to feed the perching birds.  We have found a place on our kitchen window where the squirrels cannot get to and now we get chickadees and tufted titmice, and once a woodpecker.

These little visitors make me so happy.  We haven't been lucky at attracting birds till this winter but I swear now they know us as a feeding spot and come every morning in expectation.  Throughout the day the pair of tufted titmice and the chickadees take turns flying into the feeder and chasing each other out.

photo taken by Grandpa

Of course, I think of Grandpa when I birdwatch and I tell him that I do so because of him and what he showed me.  I would like to glimpse a bluebird around here again like I saw last spring

2. Sparky has moved to a big boy bed this month.  He is doing very well!  There are some sleepless naptimes (when I have to threaten him with going in the pack and play :) and we need to leave our door open at night to hear his swishing jammied feet coming out at 3am thinking it is morning time. 

3.  Sparky finally is coming out of his puzzle kick.  He still does puzzles several times a week, but it is not the all. day. long. demanding "MAKE A PUDDLE!!" obsession that it was for about a month.  He can make most of them on his own and we are all so thankful, because every one of us were soooo sick of those little puzzles

4.  This month our whole family finished the largest puzzle we ever tried, this Country Cottage Jigsaw Puzzle with 1500 pieces.  Turtle was the most dedicated and did most of the work.  D. and I found ourselves caught up into it late into the evening even after the kids were in bed. The two younger girls either didn't have the ability yet or lacked the attention span.  Everyone did help though, even Sparky, who would say "I sink . . . dis go . . . here!" as he jammed random pieces together.

5.  February is also the month Sunshine started reading!  She is the proud reader of 5 Bob books so far.  She is working in the beginning book in the Explode the Code series and also writing phonetic words with the movable alphabet.  

From a year ago, but its finally clicking now!

6.  Near the beginning of February I started working on getting back into exercising.  I always have some excuse for not doing it, but I feel fat and sedentary now and spring is coming, including a 5k that I'd like to run.  I am using this Lindsay Brin workout DVD, although by no stretch of the imagination can you consider me in a "post-natal" stage.   Oh, well, whatever.  The workouts are the right level of challenging for me and she is a nice, non-annoying trainer.  I only own 2 workout DVDs, hers and a Jillian Michaels and Jillian is . . . harsh and b****y, so . . . Postnatal it is!   I am modifiying her core exercises with ones from this "Crunchless Abs" video, because of my diastasis split.  I am intrigued by this woman's site in which you sign up for a 90-day challenge involving a free workout video (20 min!) emailed to you every day but Sunday.  I'm only deterred by our lack of monthly data to watch a video a day.  Boo hoo.  

7.  And, last, but not least, in February events, we have finally evicted the tenant in the house we bought when we got married.  He has lived there since 2008 and has cared for it well, but the guy just couldn't ever pay rent on time.  He now owes us close to $6000 and we hope to be able to get it all back slowly over time.  But since he isn't reliably employed, that may have to be through docking the wife's disability checks.  We will find that out in April. 
Yeah, tough, I know.  But its been years coming and they knew it.  Thankfully they left without a fight.  Now we are praying to St. Joseph to find us good, clean, PAYING renters! 

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