It’s spring, technically. The 50-degree weather we’re having is seasonally appropriate, even though it’s unpleasantly chilly and windy compared with last week’s 70-degree afternoons.

Things are so much easier on those 70-degree days. Those days when it’s warm, partly cloudy, and just a little breezy are pleasantly low maintenance. No coat. No gloves. No wet or snowy boots. No dripping umbrella to carry around. No heat index. You can sit outside as long as you like without getting hot or cold or wet or muddy or having your eyes and hair ravaged by gusts.

We don’t get enough of those days.

Even after a mild winter, I’m ready for spring to bloom into summer. I’m tired of high maintenance weather that means putting hats and coats on the kids before we leave the house and my purse strap getting caught on the hood of my own jacket.

These little-kid years, when my children are one and three, can feel like the chilly and obnoxiously windy day outside. I have to constantly watch them to make sure they don’t hurt themselves (or each other.) They climb on the furniture and on each other and on me. Their food has to be cut into safely bite-sized pieces before every meal. If we venture out of the house, I wear a backpack filled with diapers, wipes, snacks, water bottles, toys, and extra clothes. I carry Phoebe on my hip and hold Walter’s hand when we cross a parking lot.

I look out the window and see the lawn brightening from its winter brown into a lively green. We venture out into the backyard, wearing rubber boots and coats to protect us from the soggy ground and chilly air of not-yet-spring. Phoebe sits in a puddle, but she doesn’t eat buds or sticks or rocks. Walter uses my hand spade to dig a hole in one of last year’s planters. He buries a stick “so bad guys won’t find it.” They putter around the yard and I don’t have to watch them quite as closely as I did last spring.

Someday, when Phoebe is too old and too big to snuggle in my lap for some comfort nursing, and when Walter is too old and too big for me to carry across the house after he’s fallen asleep in the car, things will be different.

They’ll dress themselves and walk voluntarily to the car with their shoes on. They’ll get their own snacks. We’ll all sit together in the house, enjoying each other’s company as we attend to our own activities. They won’t bite each other or jump on me from the back of the couch. We’ll walk through a store, or a parking lot, or church with no diaper bag and no concern for what they might do if they dart out of arm’s reach.

It’s March, and there are buds on the trees. Crocuses and daffodils already bloom in my mom’s flower beds. The lilac bush in front of my own house is sprouting tiny leaves.