The fact that it’s mid-March should mean that winter is well behind us, but the weather forecast tells a different story: we have 5 to 9 inches of snow forecast for Monday. I utterly refuse to believe it.

Dash is doing beginner’s ice hockey, did I tell you? It’s so beginner that they haven’t even touched a stick or a puck yet, and they’ve had four of their six classes, but it’s all about learning technique, apparently. Which mostly means how to skate better, so I’m all for that. He’s come along a lot considering in December he was like an octopus on ice, all flailing arms and falling down. Last Sunday I took both kids to the open skate (while B recovered from his 50km race; need I elaborate?) and Dash was showing Mabel and me how to skate backwards and practicing his jump-stops and not falling down at all. I’m impressed. It was worth the ridiculous amount of hockey gear I had to shell out for, because it was too late in the season to find anything second-hand.

Meanwhile, Mabel has decided she doesn’t want to take dance this term, so she has zero extra-curriculars, while he has hockey now and baseball already signed-up for starting in April. My surprisingly sporty child, that one. I fear he’s getting this privileged treatment as the firstborn, because once he’s doing things I’m reluctant to fill up all our other evenings with other things for Mabel – like T-ball, for instance. But it’s also because I’m pretty much 100% sure she has no interest in doing T-ball. Although she’ll freely admit that she wants a trophy, just doesn’t want to play the sport.