Snow Blows

Yesterday morning I woke up, late. It was 5:30. I had 35 minutes to get myself and the boys up, dressed, and off to work and daycare. I fed Nick, it was 5:50 by the time I was done. I laid him back in his crib to play and got myself dressed and ready to go. At 5:57 I got Collin up and dressed and brought him downstairs. I ran back upstairs to get Nick. As soon as I picked him up, he puked all down the front of my shirt. Fortunately, he missed his so I only needed to change one of us. I laid him back in his crib and found a clean shirt for myself. Pick Nick up again, head down the stairs and strap him into his car seat. Its 6:05, I might actually make it. Collin has a meltdown. I had to literally drag him to the front door kicking and screaming where I proceeded to try to arm wrestle him into his coat. As I bent over to start our match I heard a loud rip. Sure enough I'd split my pants right down the center. Collin wins round 1 as Mommy runs back upstairs to change her pants. By this time Tim is up because who could sleep through all that racket. I stand in the middle of the bedroom and take a deep breath because at this point I'm just ready to cry and I hate to cry. Also, I don't have any clean pants because Nick yaks on EVERYTHING I wear. Tim gave me a huge hug and a pair of jeans. Finally, at 6:12 I was once again ready to walk out the door. Begin round 2 with Collin. "I'm not going. I don't want to see my friends!" I say fine and leave him standing in the doorway crying. He figures out that Mommy might really leave and says "Wait Mommy". I retrace my steps and open the door so he can come out with us but he still doesn't want to go. Now he stands on the front step and wails at the top of his lungs while I put Nick in the car. I run back and scoop Collin up and toss him over my shoulders like a sack of potatoes and rush back to the car where thankfully he doesn't give me any crap about getting in his car seat. Finally at 6:22 we are on our way to the sitter and I'm clearly going to be late for work. I don't think I have ever dropped the kids off so fast. We walked in the door. I set Nick down, plopped Collin on the couch, said good morning to Rosemary, kissed both my kids and ran out the door. By a miracle, traffic wasn't all snarled and I was only about 7 minutes late for work. When I pulled into the garage, I discovered that due to all the construction, the powers that be (in their infinite wisdom) had opened a new entrance and made the traffic 2 ways so as I rounded the corner to wear I always park I narrowly avoided a head on collision with some moron who was driving down the middle of the lane in the opposite direction. Sorry, but the garage was dangerous when the traffic only went in one direction and patients are all stupid, no matter how smart they usually are. I can't wait to see how many accidents are caused by this lame-o decision. Oh, and if all that wasn't enough to start my day off with a bang, it was snowing...

I hate the snow. If it weren't for the sheer joy on my son's face as he played in it last night I would swear that it had absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It's cold, it's wet and it freezes into ice. Enough said. This morning as I was rushing the kids out the door to get them to daycare in time for breakfast, I tried to open the van doors but they were frozen shut. Fortunately I was smart enough to leave the kids in the house while I went out to clean off the car and make sure the doors opened since they have a nasty habit of freezing shut. To make matters worse, neither car had an ice scrapper in it so I was going to have to clean it off by hand. I gave up on the van and tossed the boys in the little car and swore to get 2 ice scrappers while I was out Christmas shopping today. Incidentally, I totally forgot them. I will try to remember tomorrow.

Look at the delight on his little face! We threw snowballs and made snow angels. The whole way home from daycare all he could talk about was how he wanted to build a snowman. "It's going to be magic, Mom" "I'm going to make Frosty. We need a black hat". I thought "Oh Crap, how am I going to make that happen" but he was just so delighted by the snow, he didn't care that it wasn't good snowman snow. It wasn't really even good snowball snow, but none of that mattered. He was just so thrilled by it all.

This was one of his little snowballs I made for him, he was on his way to throw it at Daddy.

Poor kid couldn't keep his little mittens on. By the time I put them back on for the third time both of our hands were soaking wet and freezing cold but Collin still wanted to play. He couldn't get enough snowballs to throw at me. Could someone please tell me the trick to getting mittens on a 2 year old. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get his thumbs in the stupid thumb holes. No wonder they kept falling off. Poor Kid!

Even Sadie really enjoyed being out in the snow. She had a wonderful time running around while Collin and I played. Neither one of them wanted to come it but as you can see from the photos, it was getting dark.