come on already! (april 2019 edition)

everyone knows by now my seasonal struggles with the weather, especially april snow and etc. how i cried and i wrote a poem because i wanted to go window-shopping on my free day and the weather wasn't good. and i mean, i laugh about it when i'm not in the middle of it. but this year the whole late spring thing is extra annoying. first of all, i've spent the whole month since we moved being super sick (2 bad colds in quick succession). second and most frustrating: my mother in law is leaving this weekend. do you know when she came to canada?! on the first week of november last year: right after a storm that took away the last of the leaves on the trees...and about one week before the first snow.
and i mean it is a bit eye-opening to realize that we actually have almost 6 months a year without leaves. but i want her to see the leaves!!! (moreso than she wants to see them, of course: "it's alright, i believe that you have leaves") and for this purpose i've been monitoring the buds on the tree outside our office window for about 3 weeks now.

this is from last monday (9 days ago): the buds were attacked by freezing rain. 

next day, tuesday: snow day! hopefully the last snow. i went shopping for groceries, it was sleeting, i put on my spring booties: bad idea!( cue to cold no.2). got out of the stores to this.
well, not to the baby in the snow...she had to be picked up from daycare first. btw i think daycare is going ok, she says "bonjour" and "bon appetit" a lot (and "attends", i think. at this point i don't understand 30% of what she's saying.

view from my monitoring station

...and the same street 4 days later. nice weekend day, 17 degrees, got to use the stroller we had bought just before the snowpocalypse. this is the first stroller we got, i.e. probably the only one we'll use. i mean it looks practical, i hope we/i actually use it. i've always been afraid of big strollers, 3-in-1s, the works - they seem as hard to maneuver as a car, especially getting on and off transport. obviously i had somehow assumed that motherhood would make me suddenly competent at stroller-handling...instead, i just avoided buying one. so it's been baby-bjorn for a year+, in the park, on the bus/metro....luckily the baby is a lightweight. 

one week later after daycare...new season, new activity
in the meantime, we have met some neighbours: we are surrounded by old couples with cats, which is very nice. they like the kid, the kid likes the cats, everyone is happy. (her grandmother prefers looking at the birds.) 

my mother in law is making her suitcase: there's exactly 1 "thing" she would like to take with her.

and still no leaves yet! well at least the snow has gone (almost entirely; we still have a patch in a backyard corner).