A winter survival guide

It's snowing. Again.

I know I shouldn't complain, we need the moisture, etcetera. But I am starting to get tired of winter and would really like some nice weather so I and my cabin-fevered children can get out of the house a little more (and not just to go shopping, since we all know how much my children love that). The weather did warm up a little this week, for just a few days, but that brief reprieve is almost more frustrating than it was worth, as it reminded us, tantalizingly, how nice it was to be outside for longer than ten minutes without freezing. (Of course, the freezing thing may just be me, since it doesn't seem to bother my kids any).

So, what do we do, when we're stuck inside, you ask? Well, in the spirit of the how-to essays many of my students are working on, here's how-to winter survival guide. Sort of.

First, find a project that will keep your oldest happily engrossed. The youngest one pretty much takes care of herself, but if the oldest is bored, he will give you no end of grief. Luckily, we have a few of these projects around. He still plays with is trio sets on a daily basis: recently he's created dinosaurs, birds, fish (and the aquarium for them) and today I think it was a "tiger mouth catcher," whatever that is. Of course, in the process he manages to scatter the unwanted pieces from one end of the basement to the next, but that's a small price to pay for a few minutes of peace. Other things that work: pipe cleaners, a wad of papers and scissors (he played happily for an hour and a half the other day with paper, scissors, and tape and made himself some kind of doll house. It was lopsided and kept falling over, so I had to perform some surgery), home-made playdough, etc.

This, in case you can't tell, is a condor (note the longish neck and the wide wings).

And this is a stegosaurus, complete to the four tail spikes.


Second, rechannel your inner (or outer, as the case may be) child by rediscovering the dress-up box. Dress-ups are much more fun around our house now that Evelyn is starting to join in. The other day she wandered around the house for some time in the morning roaring delightedly at anything she could see (see video below). I think she thought she was a dinosaur, but since Andrew was wearing our sole dinosaur costume, she had to settle for something else that roared.


Andrew, as a super-hero-dactyl.


When Andrew finally abandoned his costume to be a real superhero, Evelyn was quick to take advantage of it. The costume drowns her (it's a good six inches too long in the legs), but she didn't care. Her mom, however, wishes we had something more her size. Anyone have a used dinosaur costume that they aren't currently using?

Andrew, preparing for his superman jump.

Third, check local events. On Thursday, Andrew came home spouting something about a big party on Saturday that he was invited to. Since we've had our share of imaginary invites recently, I asked him if he had an invitation. He said he wasn't sure. So I asked if the girl who invited him had her parents' permission to invite him to a party. He told me that he didn't know if the girl had parents. Of course she had parents, I insisted. No, Andrew said, he wasn't sure if she was a big girl or still a kid girl. I'm still not entirely sure what he meant by that, but I gathered that whoever made the announcement about the "party" wasn't a student in his class or a teacher. A quick perusal of Andrew's backpack revealed that there was, in fact, a "party" on Saturday--but it was actually a children's Opera, where a local orchestra performs several operatic pieces and then the kids get to go downstairs to make masks and perform science experiments. We duly went (well, Andrew and I went while Evelyn slept). Andrew endured the music (we were late anyway, so he only had to sit through three pieces), but he loved the hands-on stuff downstairs. He even (unfortunately) discovered the joys of paper dolls, and has since been pestering me to help him make more.

Oh, and the local library's story time is also a good option.

Fourth, go outside anyway. I had to wade through snow to get the bikes out of the shed, but the kids seemed to enjoy it. Luckily, this time Andrew learned his lesson about staying close to the house. (Last time, he took off on his trike and was almost down to the end of the street before I managed to collar a neighbor girl on a bike and asked her to ride him down--I couldn't chase after him with Evelyn--and tell him his mom said to come back. Needless to say, we had a very detailed conversation about where Andrew can and cannot ride his trike if he wants to maintain his riding privileges). Bikes are, incidentally, one of Evelyn's new favorite things. Every time we go to Walmart (which is more often than I'd like, but our shopping options are limited here), as soon as we turn down the wide aisle that leads to the toys, her entire body lights up and she exclaims, "Bikes! bikes!" And she sure thinks she is hot stuff when she gets to ride Andrew's toys, like his scooter or his trike (but only when Andrew isn't using them, since, as it turns out, he's still fairly territorial about them!).



Finally, when all else fails, there's always Dinosaur Train. Or Backyardigans.


If you listen carefully at the beginning, you can hear Evelyn's roar. She's sure developing a funny vocabulary. My favorite at the moment is "down me" (for getting put down *and* for getting picked up). It reminds me of Andrew at the same age, when he relied heavily on "pick a down" for the same thing.






Run away! run away!