Snow Daze

Last night as I lay in bed bartering with the powers that be about the weather, it dawned on me that one of the biggest changes that accompanies motherhood is one’s attitude toward snow days. Gone are the days when days off from school means sleeping in, down time and hot chocolate. Snow days become their own little hell on earth. Even though school is canceled, you nanny can’t make it, and no Postmates are available to deliver your $45 coffee, somehow your husband can still get to work through the elements in his run-down 2008 Honda Civic (will he be able to get home? Now that’s a different question). And your kids don’t understand that sleet is not the same as snow, and are at the door by the crack of dawn ready to play outside in the winter wonderland of mud, ice, and brown slosh. And that hot chocolate and cozy fire you have such fond childhood memories of, they don’t just appear with the weather. Snow-day fun takes ceaseless adult curation. And heaven forbid you’ve run out of marshmallows! The tantrums that ensue tell you all you need to know about the snow day memories you are failing to pass on to your children…

We need to talk about mittens (and don’t get me started on gloves!). WTF is wrong with kids’ mittens? Or is it my children’s hands that are disfigured? I have never, not once, been able to get their little hands covered without a great deal of effort (and often screaming and tears). Their thumbs are just too floppy. Or maybe it’s the sticky layer of God-knows-what that always covers their hands. Or perhaps mitten-makers have to get their s**t together and figure out the technology we need to allow the greatest amount of easy thumb slippage. I mean, come on! We can get men on the moon but we can’t figure out how to fit my kids’ tiny fingers into little knit pockets? And where do all the lost mittens go? Why can we never find them when we need them? And why have I already had to order 2 dozen this season?…

I can’t decide what’s worse: the hours it takes to get 3 kids under 6 bundled up to go outside for a few min. before they are whining at the door to come in, or the hours spent playing monopoly with one hand while blocking the destructive forces of the toddler with the other.