Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Realilty Bites

I get these ideas in my head of how things are going to go and, well, they never work out that way. Rob says that's my problem, I have expectations. Of course things are going to blow up in your face when you have expectations. He's joking, kind of.



We finally had our long awaited snow day. On a teacher workday! On a day that I had a million things to do at school. We tried to set out for school, but after skidding at the end of our neighborhood, I decided to bag it. It is not worth risking my children's lives for IEPs, progress reports, and copying papers.



We slowly went home, called everyone who needed to know that we were staying home and set out about our day. Lily was so excited. This is the first snow that she can remember. That excitement melted away as I put on all of her snow gear. "This is not comfortable!" she whined. I shoved her outside and got myself ready. By the time I had squeezed into my gear, Lily had snow down her back and in her gloves and Caroline had timeout to look forward to when she got inside. I managed to get the driveway cleared when I hear Lily wailing "I'm haaaaving tooooo muuuuch fuuuun!" I wiped off her tears, helped her make one more snow angel, and trooped back inside. After I pulled off all of the clothes and lined up the dining room chairs as a drying rack, I made a cup of tea and sat down to the computer.



That lasted the half hour Caroline was in her room for timeout. Next came a wrestling match and separate corners. Caroline decided to go back out and build a snowman. I asked her to bring in some snow so we could make snow candy (http://family.go.com/parent-to-parent/blogs/catherine-newman-blog/maple-snow-taffy-733915/). I decided to be domestic mom and bake muffins, while making soup, while boiling the maple syrup and butter for the candy. No description of the ensuing chaos needed.



By the time the syrup was ready to be poured over the snow to make the candy, Caroline was back in and she and Lily were enthralled with Maggie and the Ferocious Beast on Noggin. I could barely pull Caroline away (forget Lily) to make the candy. I got a half hearted "Cool , Mom" and then ate myself sick on very yummy snow candy, all by myself (Little Red Hen, I feel your pain).



Caroline and I sat down to try to listen to the rest of Prince Caspian, when Rob came home ranting and raving about his frustrations. So much for listening to the rest of the story.



After Rob left, I let the girls go out to finish the snowman. Now it was Lily's time to get into to trouble. Caroline stuck her head in the door to yell "I thought you'd like to know, YOUR daughter just knocked over MY snowman!" Lily came in for timeout and Caroline fixed her fallen creation.



Right now, I am on my fourth cup of tea with my furry best friend at my feet. The girls are peaceably painting with the new paints Uncle Ken gave Lily. How long do you give this moment of harmony?

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