April

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay (who, I believe, was a friend of my grandmother's).

We are not up to much here. Our balmy weather disappeared quite sharply and now we have all the bright colors of spring underneath a drab gray sky. I don't mind the rain because it's been so dry lately, and there's a water shortage, but the cold is getting on my nerves. I thought I was all done with wrapping us all up in 900 layers just to go on a walk around the neighborhood.

It's the second week of the Easter holidays here, and E won't have to be back at school until next Tuesday. B had booked today off work and we spent it visiting grandparents in North London and going swimming - well, everyone else went swimming while I perched in the attached cafe area on top of a mound of our stuff, armed with a book.

Speaking of books, I broke 60k on the novel and hope to be done with the rough draft by the time we leave for France in May. Finding it awfully difficult to make time for the writing these days, but I hope to pick up the pace when E's at preschool next week. I can usually get a little bit done in the morning before picking him up at lunchtime, even if C doesn't sleep for long.

We find out whether E has been admitted to our local school (the one his preschool is attached to) next week sometime. I wasn't all that worried about our eligibility but then I heard that the school had 200+ applications for 52 places this year. So it'll be nice to have the whole official letter and all.

Our nights with a certain young miss have been full of ups and downs. Last Friday she only woke once - at 4am - and then slept until 7. Best she's ever done, and of course she doesn't go and repeat it... the nights since have been anywhere from 4-6+ wakings. But I do think we're getting somewhere, slowly. Naturally, any progress we make with the baby has to be somewhat offset by a little boy, standing at the foot of our bed at x'o'clock in the morning and saying "Dadden, my bed has turned into a volcano, you need to come turn it into a bed again." And then showing up fifteen minutes later, after being given a "guardian" stuffed wolf, to say "Wolfy has caught fire in the hot volcano, please save him."

Well, bedtime is rolling around sooner than expected (doesn't it always?) so here is a token picture, because blog posts with just words always seem like such insurmountable walls of text....

I hasten to add that B was the one who dressed her, and the pom-pom boots were definitely his choice as well. But she carries off the look well, I think.