A heavy snowfall swept through our area Tuesday night, and June’s preschool was canceled Wednesday in the event conditions were particularly bad. I looked forward to spending the day at home with my little girl, working on a few blog projects, reading stories and playing blocks with June, but the power went out at about 11 a.m. Wednesday and I found out later the storm knocked out power to the entire town! No heat, no Wi-Fi, no music. So we went outside and played in the snow.
Solha couldn’t get enough of the deep snow, but June didn’t like it. She’s still too little to trudge around in thick, white powder without toppling over. She reminded me of the kid brother from The Christmas Story….”I can’t move my arms!”
So we spent the rest of the afternoon inside reading stories, drinking tea, playing blocks and puzzles until Jake came home to hook up the generator so we had heat. (Boy, do I love the generator!)
I don’t know about other parents, but I’m conditioned to want to multitask with everything I do — sneak in a bit of work when I’m with June, read this, clean that, slip in a call while trying to focus on her, and usually these things can’t be helped — it’s part of the package with being a grown up — but it always leaves me feeling a bit scattered and frazzled, like I’m always behind on something, but I can never really figure out what.
So yesterday it was nice in a way to have no distractions — no computer, no phone, no power with which to do blog projects, nothing to interfere with my time with my kid. And we had a nice day, just the two of us, hanging out. I know these days won’t last forever. There will come a day when the last thing in the world she’ll want to do is to spend a day alone with mom, so I try to cherish the snow days while I can.
Having heat in my house gave shape to this epiphany. Otherwise there would have been hell to pay.
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I had been wondering what Solha thought of the snow. It must have been a shock at first. The cold itself is such a huge change for her, then add the snow. When my son was June’s age we were in Vermont. He loved being in the snow. When he turned the correct shade of blue we would have to drag him in.
I love disconnect days too! Every time a storm blows in, I wish for the power to go out! I’m glad you enjoyed your time with your daughter; she is a cutie.
Thanks!
I was desperately hoping the weatherman was wrong, but like you, we retrospectively appreciated the way nature “forced” us to slow down and enjoy each other’s company.
The occasional “well, I just we’ll just take it off” day is fantastic, if you can really commit to embracing it instead of feeling guilty or trying to get just a few little things done.
No heat? What happened to the uber-scary wood burning furnace?
The wood furnace requires power to run the fans which stoke the flames that heat the water that run through the radiators and heat our house. It’s a fairly sophisticated operation for such a rustic heat source!
And a question — the snow day sounded wonderful, but without power, HOW did you manage to make tea? We just had our latest power outage of the winter (short-lived, only three hours this time), but heating water was not at all possible…do you have some kind of magic wand?
Ours is a gas stove…I turned on the propane and lit a match.
A bit delayed but gratification never-the-less, raise her with love and respect and that’ll just be a phase. I’m a young adult and LOVE spending saturdays with my mother. The problem for me is pinning her down long enough to get away without anyone else tagging along!
I always mulit-task with kids, and did especially when they were young. My husband would brag “When they’re with me, *I* focus 100% of my time with them.” Well, they *were* with me 100% of the time, so if I did, I’d never get anything done! I’m too said one day they’ll not want to spend any time with me, but luckily at 11 and 9, they still think I’m pretty cool!
My mom used to make snow candy with real maple syrup. All you need is cake pans filled with freshly fallen snow.. real maple syrup and you boil it until it is at that hard ball stage.. (test it in a glass of water).. then drizzle in the pan of snow to create swirls of maple candy.. natural and GOOD.
So funny. Jake and June made something similar when he came home that night except he used chocolate syrup. He scooped a bunch of freshly fallen snow in a bowl, came inside, served it up into two bowls and drizzled chocolate sauce on top; chocolate snowballs! June loved it. I meant to do a quick post about it but I didn’t have my camera. Next snow storm.