Spring in My Step

The past few weeks have been soothing to the soul. I have been able to take my little daycare family outside once, if not twice every single day. While we still long for the snow to melt, a little less mud, green grass and to be in the back yard ... we are making the most out of what we have been given. And we have been given some pretty decent walking weather.

My little two-year-old is a real trooper. He walks along and 'pushes' the stroller with me while my one-year-olds sit in the lap of luxury and doze off whenever they like as we travel the city streets.

Wednesday we walked for a few hours. My girls fell asleep as we strolled. Not at the same time though. One fell asleep. When she woke up, the other fell asleep. I got a lot of flyers delivered as I waited for both girls to be awake at the same time. And my little two-year-old was so happy to be outside and moving he happily kept on walking.

Yesterday, we headed towards a donut shop that is not exactly a hop, skip and a jump away. It was more like long, arduous trek (if you were two years old). But we simply kept putting one foot in front of the other and made our way to our destination.

We lost a boot, a watch and a mitt in our travels. Long story short, in the end we found all of the above items. But I had to retrace our steps after the kids left last night to accomplish that small feat.

My Youngest decided to join me for my walk-in-search-of-lost-treasures last night. He had walked home from school and was eager to show me the route that he took and we scouted out possible short cuts on our way home.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable day. I put on a fair amount of miles but more importantly, I breathed in a lot of fresh spring air. The breeze was warm and the sun shone upon our day (honestly, I can't remember if the sun was shining or not, but it was warm enough to remove our mitts on the way home).

I sat down at the end of the day and my Middle Son suggested that we map out a few possibilities for the completion of the deck railing and consider some fencing ideas. Oh, the mere idea of 'taking back the back yard' again (it has become the domain of my son's dogs and it is not the yard that I remember it to be) made my heart happy.

It has been a long, cold winter and I am so grateful to be back outside again. I haven't been outside much since I took my Daycare Hiatus several years ago. With every step I take, I know that I am headed back to where I long to be. I am home again. In so many ways ...

Welcome back, Spring. I have missed you so.

The difference a week can make: