I
Since yesterday was the Solemnity of the Ascension (even though most diocese have moved the observance to this coming Sunday), today begins the novena to the Holy Spirit leading up to Pentecost! The Pentecost Novena is the first novena ever celebrated by the Church: after Christ's Ascension, the Apostles returned to Jerusalem and spent nine days in prayer before the Holy Spirit descended upon them at Pentecost. Consider joining the novena this year to pray for the gifts of the Spirit in your life!
II
Blessed warmth! On Wednesday, we hit 50 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time since October 4. This afternoon, we may reach 60! It is so wonderful. The snow has been disappearing so quickly: I can tell a difference in the south-facing yard's snow cover from one hour to the next. Blue skies, birds singing, sun shining... perfection.
Lots and lots of sunshine: the sun rose at 4:44 this morning, and won't set until 10:53 tonight! And by "set," we mean the bottom of the sun touching the horizon. For all practical purposes, we have pretty much achieved our 'round the clock summer sun already: our room certainly wasn't all that dark when Little Bear was rolling around at 1 am. Alaska is known as the Land of the Midnight Sun for good reason!
III
Fortunately for us, we aren't experiencing much of that wee-hours-of-the-morning light because Little Bear is getting so good about not waking up at night! He may roll over and eat for a few minutes once or twice, but I don't always even remember it because neither of us really has to wake up for it. Some people have expressed concern that we are letting him sleep in our bed too long and he will never learn to sleep by himself... "Never" is pure hogwash, and too long? He's only 10 months old! He will learn to sleep in his own bed soon enough; there is no way I would want to give up these easy nights where we all sleep 9 to 10 hours straight in favor of a weeks-long difficult adjustment period just for the sake of a little extra space.
IV
The siren-song of this gorgeous weather has lured Little Bear and me out for several walks this week. The longest was 3.3 miles, which we thoroughly enjoyed, but my breakup boots took vengeance on me for putting them to so much use and left a couple of blisters on my feet. I should probably resist the call to do it again this afternoon, to give them a little longer to heal, but it's so pretty outside... We will see. I am just so happy to be able to go for walks this spring! Last year I was in the third trimester of a pregnancy that was doing terrible things to my hips, and even walking around the house was sometimes impossible, so I spent most of the spring looking longingly out the window at the sunny days I couldn't take advantage of.
V
Maybe the little boy and I will take a walk while the jeep is at the shop today. It goes in in about an hour, and I unfortunately allowed the boy to go down for a nap that I knew he wouldn't be able to finish before we have to leave... I fully anticipate having a screaming passenger all the way across town. If I bring the ergo, though, maybe we can walk around a few blocks and he can fall back to sleep while the mechanics assess the damage done by the lady who rear-ended the jeep when Matt stopped at a stop sign on Monday.
VI
Walking shoes. It's still too wet/snowy/cold/mucky for taking walks in anything but breakup boots, but soon enough it will be dry, so I'm looking for suggestions. My last pair of tennis shoes were Champions, which I had heard good things about and provided fairly good support, but they fell apart quickly. I wore them last summer anyway, but they had huge holes in the sides and toes and I finally had to get rid of them. What do you use? I need good arch support, but I don't plan to do a whole lot of running so I don't need something high-end. Just comfortable, not too hard to get on while wrangling a nearly-toddler, and well-made. Any suggestions?
VII
Almost-toddler is right: Little Bear crawls as quickly as I can, pulls himself up on everything, cruises along furniture and stands on his own for a few seconds after letting go, and learned about climbing steps yesterday. We don't have stairs in our apartment, so he had never really encountered them. Yesterday we were visiting a friend, though, and Jude saw something up two steps that he really wanted. I, secure in the knowledge that he'd never seen stairs and couldn't know how to navigate them, wasn't really paying attention until he was suddenly up one step and working to get his knee up onto the second. He sat up on top, grinned, bounced up and down, and decided to slide down on his tummy face-first... I caught him before he could, but from now on we are going to have to pay a lot more attention to anywhere we go with stairs!
Have a wonderful Mothers Day weekend! Check out ConversionDiary.com for more quick takes!
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