The first anniversary of my mother's death passed this past Sunday. It was much on all of our minds, but we've coped with it. Some of us are surprised at how well we coped with it, although I caution that sometimes we focus so much on the anniversary of such traumatic events, we're unprepared for how much harder the days after that anniversary turn out to be. But, still we cope.
I haven't had much energy to put into this blog, but I have been keeping busy. I've maintained a steady pace of roughly two-to-three non-fiction kids books since this past September, which I'm grateful for and proud of the results. My column with the Kitchener Post continues, and I surprised myself by making considerable progress on The Sun Runners and a potential sequel (inasmuch as it's set in the same universe) tentatively entitled Pen Pals. Actually, I'm already over 2,000 words into Pen Pals, though Erin tells me that I must finish The Sun Runners first. Either way, I think my mother would be pleased about that.
The weather was brutally cold until just a few days ago, and then suddenly became so warm that a good half of our accumulated snow melted. And just when we were thinking "January thaw", we've been issued with a flash freeze warning. The temperature has dropped by 12 degrees Celsius in the span of four hours. At least it's not raining at the moment, where I am, or else we'd have a coating of ice. We still might, from all the puddles.
Erin's hard at work on a new project that is involving Vivian. Nora has told us that she wants to be known more as "Eleanor". I'm proud of her for choosing her own name (and we named her as such in the expectation that she might), but it's going to be a significant adjustment _not_ to call her Nora. She's been trouping off to school, destroying her competitors at Math games, and fixing her own lunches. How quickly (and differently) they grow up.
It's grey now, and it doesn't seem fair to be losing the warmth after too brief a thaw, but I expect we'll have some bright days ahead. The Polar Vortex at least graces us with clear blue skies. And we continue to look forward to spring.