I know I've done a living room picture before, but this is where we were during the entire month of February. Between the girls being really sick when the weather was nice and the weather being really yucky when everyone was well, there was a whole lot of Just Dance, and our latest obsession, re-watching all our episodes of Avatar.
We are completely addicted to this show. All of us love it. We haven't watched it in years because Ellery was too young for some of the content, but now she's firebending anything that moves. So watch out.
I've been trying to be more mindful of our family rhythms this last year, keeping in mind that everything is cyclical, good and bad. It sounds so obvious, but it's not easy when you're in the thick of it. Winter is not our family's best season. We don't get snow here, and we don't usually feel like driving 4 hours round trip to be in the snow, so there's a lot of languishing, sleeping in, and getting cabin fever. The sun has been mostly gone for months by February, and the backyard has so much slime and muck and standing water that no one is interested in stepping out.
This time of year our dining room is one of the coldest rooms in the house, so we have taken to having our dinner picnic style on the living room floor almost every night. We turn on the fire, turn on some Avatar, and cozy up. I know the importance of actual tables and not watching tv while eating, and during other family "seasons" we talk around the table or I read out loud during dinner, but this year I am approaching each month as it is for us. Just as we don't enforce a 9 pm bedtime for the kids in the middle of summer, I'm not going to be insisting on making it into the dining room every night in the dead of winter. I know that as the days get longer and warmer we will move back into those routines. Also we're running out of Avatar episodes.
