Skipping Town

After another snowy week last week, I was counting the seconds until we could go to Connellsville and have a few days of R n' R, where it wouldn't matter if we were snowed in because Lucia and Greta wouldn't even know we were there, so focused they would be on Gra and Pop-Pop. Alas, we got another snowstorm on Thursday, so we couldn't leave that afternoon as we'd planned. I wanted to just get in the car and go; Andrew pointed out we couldn't even leave our driveway. Friday, we gave the girls their Valentine's Day gifts in the morning. I'll digress here to say that after years of assuming everyone gave Valentine's Day gifts to their kiddos, I see now I was wrong. It doesn't matter. I like planning their little Valentine's Day surprises, and this year I (fine, WE) gave them each a mermaid Hello Kitty, some colored pens, a few tiny notebooks, a unicorn necklace, a book, a coloring book, and a tiny teaset featuring the very kawaii Rikkukuma bea...

Lucia at dinnertime:  "Eating dinner is not fun. I like playing and drawing." Lucia, looking at the refrigerator: "Mama, when are we getting a new refrigerator?" "When we get a new kitchen." [Panic-stricken face:] "But...but...When we get a new kitchen we have to TAKE ALL THE FOOD OUT OF THIS REFRIGERATOR FIRST!" We let the girls watch some Olympic figure skating this afternoon, which they loved. But Lucia seemed troubled that each skater was on the ice by herself. "Where are her friends?" she kept asking. She seemed relieved when the skaters returned to their coaches and teammates. Lucia and Andrew played outside in the ice-snow for a long time today. Andrew pulled Lucia on the sled; Lucia sucked on icicles; and they played an elaborate game of princess/giant/witch/etc. Greta, for her part, refused to go outside or even put on any socks. For one second, she agreed to go outside; I got as far as her snowpants before she mutinied. ...

This has been the longest week of my entire life. I feel like the past six days have pummeled me. I last posted on Tuesday, and the rest of the week proved to still be long and ridiculous. Wednesday morning we woke to yet another wintry wonderland, everything snow-covered, all the tree branches coated in ice. School and sitter: cancelled. Andrew worked from home, but the day was just long, long, long. I have no memory of how we spent it. I'm sure it involved coloring and dancing and the Sit N Spin, maybe the Squinkie fairies, perhaps the "slide" I make for them out of an old Ikea shelf. Yes: we did the slide. I remember now. There was a lot of jostling and arguing and pushing and it all ended very unhappily for all. That afternoon, pushed to the limit of feasible activities, I dumped the food-coloring-tinted ice cubes into a Pyrex baking dish, announced "Rainbow ice!", and left them to it. They squealed with excitement and managed to find ways to play with the...

Monday: snow day. Just a ton of snow. Snow and snow and snow. Snow covering our car and coating all the tree branches. Preschool was cancelled; I had to cancel the sitter since it was too dangerous to drive. At least Andrew worked from home so at least I didn't go totally insane. Still, our across-the-street neighbor does occasionally wonder if we're all dead inside, since on days like this our car just sits there in the driveway, snow-covered, and not a soul is seen outside our house. Our entire life on these winter days takes place within these walls. And then today--Tuesday is always my long day, and today was doubly long since it followed an identical yesterday. At least the roads were clear today, so I took the girls to Target, where the "fun carts" were not only buried in snow but also encrusted in ice. With my boot, I kicked and cleared one well enough to push inside; and then a very nice employee helped me clear and dry off the rest. So at least we had some ...

Winter with little kids is hard. It is easier to be here, in a house, than it was to be cooped up in our apartment in Brooklyn. Here, at least, we have various areas to be cooped up in--we can be cooped up in the living room or play area; we can be cooped up in the kitchen; we can be cooped up in the basement playroom. Still, we are cooped up. It has been snowy and frigid, so there has been no opportunity whatsoever for going outside, and until this morning our car was snowed in. And so the past few days have been long, long, long. Tuesdays are always tough for me, since there's no preschool and no babysitter, and this Tuesday was made even harder by an early Greta wakeup, an early departure of Andrew for work, a long freezing day, and Andrew's post-work drinks, which meant he missed bedtime. (He actually skipped the drinks because of the snow, but then had a ridiculous two-hour commute; but I digress.) The day did not start promisingly: the girls' scream-laughing chase a...