Yearning for a change

Winters are too long here in UT. Although this year's winter has been quite mild, I still feel the need to change *something* while awaiting for the changes that spring brings. My hair often turns out to be the first victim. Last year I chopped it myself, just like the year before that. This time I decided instead of cutting my hair yet again, I'd rather add some 'life' to it.

Henna turned out to be the perfect choice. It's natural, doesn't damage my hair, can be applied many times without having to wait more than 3 days, and it leaves my hair looking amazingly healthy, which is huge improvement for my usual shine-free, dull looking hair.

Dyeing my hair with henna is also quite fun, because there's no way to predict the exact shade my hair would end up with. Since I didn't mind experimenting and was feeling quite adventurous, I didn't mind the prospect of my hair ending up the same shade as my couch. I even added some turmeric to the henna mix to improve the odds of an unexpected result.

Here's my hair just a couple of hours after dyeing:

And here it is 3 days later:

So the color 3 days later ended up being more red than on the first day. I think now, almost a week later, my hair kept the same red shade and turned a little darker. I like it! Honestly, I don't know what I enjoyed more, the process or the end result. But I can tell with certainty, this is not the last time ;) In fact, I can't even guarantee that I'll stick to the same color, ha!

She did it!

A couple of weeks ago we finally made it to the pool, thanks to grandma and grandpa who came with us, otherwise we'd never dare in our right mind to go to the pool with kids outnumbering us. With grandma's and grandpa's watchful eyes being there, I knew I didn't have to worry about Maya and Elijah getting out of *my* sight. My worry now was Anya.

Knowing how anti-water she had always been (hence the once-a-month baths) and remembering her encounter with water in Chicago where it took her 3 seconds to start screaming after her toes touches the great Lake Michigan, I was confident it was just a matter of a few seconds before she'd get mad at me for trying to trick her into taking a bath that way. Still, she was wearing a cute swimsuit that cost me a whole $2 at a consignment store, so I had to give it a try. I let her toes touch the water. Nothing. I let her feet touch the water. Nothing. I let her hands touch the water. SPLA-SHING. Not believing my eyes I set her down on all fours and she just started crawling around IN THE WATER, like it was the most natural thing for her to do. So she loved it, the whole hour and a half we spent there she kept crawling in the water and splashing. Grandma and I even took her deeper in the pool, she didn't mind that either.

I guess that was another one of those milestones that I knew would happen some day, but it still completely caught me by surprise. Lovely, lovely surprise!

Finding courage

Meh, don't know what happened. Well, actually I know what happened at the beginning of ignoring my blog. December was a busy month. You know, the usual - making gifts, getting ready for Christmas. And then... nothing. I just couldn't bring myself to click on the link in my toolbar and make a long overdue post. Pathetic. So that's what I did all January, felt guilty for not posting. Time to be done with this nonsence!

I have to thank quite a few people who left comments, emailed or posted on FaceBook encouraging me to start blogging again. If it weren't for you, I'd probably still try to pretend that I don't know what that blog link in toolbar is for and who's blog it is. The sad thing is, I had things to blog about, things I wanted to write about so I would remember them, but I didn't and I forgot what they were. Lesson learned.

This winter has been everything I expected it to be, long and depressing. The leap into February is very welcome here, it means that there's only 28 days left until first day of spring, and each day is going to get longer and hopefully warmer. Much needed hope of change for my weary mind.

My goal for February is inspired by this blog post (and Emily's blog is worth subscribing to, the quiet energy of her posts and thoughts is like a breath of fresh air, so simple and so refreshing). Each day I'll try to find at least one thing about winter that I'm thankful for and hope that this will help me find joy of life in the moment instead of waiting to start living on the 1st of March...

And to celebrate the fresh start, I'm posting a couple of snapshots of Anya, our almost 10 month old bean who's growing way too fast!