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I think I get Russia's strategy [war of attrition to deplete western arms and Ukranian manpower] but even with that I had assumed we were going to see a larger push into Ukraine as spring began
From what i can see – and various commentators on both the Ukrainian and Russian sides agree – the push has already begun. The pattern looks almost identical to what happened in previous years: a lull of around two months in February and March, followed by a slow-rolling offensive that starts gradually in the mid to late spring, picks up speed in the summer and peaks in early to mid autumn.
Of course it's not 100% guaranteed that this pattern will hold, the Russian General Staff may always change things up, but so far the pattern has been that each year the progress made is greater than the previous year, with lower losses for the Russian side than the previous year and higher losses for the Ukrainian side, which reflects the increasingly dire attrition of Ukrainian manpower and other resources. It is also a function of Ukraine's loss of its most heavily fortified areas and after each Russian offensive being forced to fall back to defensive lines that are less fortified than the last, having had less time and resources to build them up.
Right now Russia is basically on the doorstep of the final fortified agglomeration in the Donbass around the cities of Slavyansk* and Kramatorsk, they are advancing westward toward the Dnieper in the Zaporozhye region, and they are widening the buffer zone in the Sumy and Kharkov regions. Could they suddenly decide that they want to go faster? Sure. But i wouldn't bet on it. It wouldn't be consistent with what we have observed so far from the Russian side.
*Historical "fun fact": Slavyansk and Kramatorsk were among some of the main cities, alongside Donetsk, Lugansk, Mariupol, Kharkov and Odessa, where the 2014 "Russian Spring" uprising against the Maidan Nazi coup first began. All except for Donetsk and Lugansk were eventually crushed by the new Nazi regime's forces when Russia refused to step in and defend them the way they defended the people of Crimea that same year. Therefore, in the eyes of many Russian people, it is symbolically important that they be liberated at some point.