Life Lately ~ March 2021

I heard the first robin of the year before I saw him...as the blush of a new dawn stained the sky, he sang a cheerful good morning to the world. A couple days later I heard him again, at the top of a tree, but his song had taken on (what I imagined to be) an aggrieved tone as the world had been blanketed in snow.

Every spring I watch the earliest of the newly returned birds hop around in the freezing cold and imagine them talking to each other with human personalities, grumbling about the weather, the work of scrounging up breakfast from the still frozen earth, and why the heck Harriet had taken over the family nesting spot. "Have you caught a glimpse of old Mort from across the creek? He's getting a little thick around the middle!" I am in reality a very busy person...

Now at the end of the month, the trilling of many birds joins in, completing the ruckus I could only imagine last month.

We started out the month with an echocardiogram and ultrasound for Liam's heart. At his check up in November his doctor found a heart murmur, which wasn't concerning or surprising to me at the time. Gavin also had a heart murmur, an innocent "stills" murmur caused by the noisy pumping of his beastly strong heart, that has since resolved itself. However, Liam's testing showed that in the wall between the top two chambers of his heart there is a small hole that allows unoxygenated blood to pass through. Besides occasional shortness of breath, it is unlikely to cause him trouble as a child, but may need surgery as he gets older. We haven't told Liam and won't until he is older. He normally struggles with anxiety and we have no desire to saddle him with more than he needs at this time. We're just praying it doesn't need medical intervention for a very long time, if at all.

Lots of new things are happening this month. We bought our new flooring! After being unable to find free flooring samples at some of the big name stores and having mini cardiac arrests on seeing the price tag at some of the local stores, we found a place that was within reason, easy to work with, and more than helpful. I highly recommend Mr. Carpets Flooring in Decorah! We loved an "Itasca Pine" sample but ultimately went with Marquis Montana "Aged Cedar" luxury vinyl plank. And then began the difficult task of being patient until our floor guy gets here to install them. I had to lay out some planks to get a better idea of how it'd look. It's something I've been hoping for for so long it almost feels like it might never really happen. 

Because we're doing three of the main big rooms in our house, I had to pack up and move out as much as possible. Since we plan on putting in built-in bookshelves along the whole window wall in the dining room, I decided that the old bookcases might as well be taken out now. Addie's room is now full of boxes of books, and will be indefinitely. The boys and I carried the old bookcases down to the basement where they are now enjoying a second (last) life in useful service holding paint cans, caulk, concrete repair products, canning supplies and extra pantry items. I was insanely excited about this! 

Eli then spent hours crawling around on the floor screwing the old wood floor down to the floor joists. There is no more squeaking and creaking when we walk through the dining room! If we had imagined what a difference that alone would make it probably would have been done much much sooner. Eli also pried up one of the floorboards that rises and falls a good half an inch through the course of the year. We discovered that someone years ago mortared bricks in between the floor joists that run above the stone wall between the two rooms in the basement, which didn't allow for the natural, separate movements of the earth and house. Eli chipped the bricks out, which will hopefully solve the floor heaving. 

And as always happens to me when anything gets moved in the house, I decided it was time to fix up and update other things. Furniture will be rearranged when it goes back in each room. (The desks, for example, have been in the same places we put them when we moved in.) I went through the house patching holes and cracks in the plaster walls, and went to bring up paint from the basement. I found that we were completely out of the dining room "greige" paint, but I did find the teal green to fix the "covid paint job" in the school room. While most of the dining room will stay the "greige" color Eli picked out five years ago, I thought it would be nice to change it up a little and do either a gray-blue or a terra cotta/clay pot colored accent wall to liven up the room. We have two giant white pine trees towering over the house in the front yard that block a lot of natural light, so our house seems dark a lot. I've found myself collecting lamps. 

The process of elimination

This month I read The Tamarack Tree, a junior fiction novel set during the Civil War that I had loved when I was in middle school, but seemed cheesy and contrived as an adult. I also started rereading the Chronicles of Narnia, starting with The Magician's Nephew. They seemed so much more exciting and complex when I read them as a child, but they're still pleasant to revisit. I had forgotten so much of the stories! 

We wrapped the month up on week 28 of school. At this point we can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Ian finished his math back in February and Gavin finished science for the year as well. Slowly there is less to do, days go faster, and moods are exponentially better as we can all get outside and soak up the fresh air and sunshine (when it decided to show itself). Aidan and Gavin will both be taking the Iowa Assessments in April, so they've been studying for those. It's a challenge keeping track of everything when the entire school room has been packed up and shuffled elsewhere...and convincing boys school must go on despite the chaos.