Adventures

We've had quite a week in the H household! We had a nasty storm system move in Monday evening (12th) and stick around until Wednesday afternoon. Points north of us got a lot of snow. We got about 6 or 7 inches of snow on Tuesday....then it changed into freezing rain due to a warmer air mass high in the atmosphere. Yum. There's nothing quite like being roused out of a sound sleep at 2:30 in the morning to a thundering downpour ~ and it was actual rain, not sleet. Since it was also only 12 deg (Fahrenheit) on the ground at the time, it instantly froze to everything. It filtered down through the snow and solidified it. Normally if snow has a crust on top, you can step for a second and then break through a little bit. We have almost a foot of solid ice outside that my nearly 200-lb husband can jump up and down on and it doesn't move. I've never seen anything like it, and I lived in Alaska for several years so I know snow! Our street still isn't completely plowed, and four lane roads are down to two lanes in some places. Our Siberian Husky loves it; the rest of us aren't quite as enthused as he is.

As a result of this lovely weather, A has been out of school for a week. He begged me yesterday (Sunday) three different times to get on the school bus and tried to put on his backpack (which he usually can't stand). He is supposed to start back on Tuesday. A has a mild dose of cabin fever, I think.

And to add to the chaos, my darling 10-month old daughter has started walking by herself. She just let go of her stand-up toy on Saturday and toddled 5 or 6 steps over to me, where I was sitting on the couch. I stared at her for a minute, thinking surely this was a fluke. Then the little booger took off for her toy, and has since been making longer forays on her own. And of course these are accompanied by the usual tumbles and spills associated with learning to walk. The egg on her forehead should be fine by tomorrow. She will be 11 months at the end of the week. As exciting as this is, I would have been just fine if she'd waited until after she turned one, too. Amazing how one's perspective changes: with the first baby, it's soooo exciting when they learn how to walk; with the second one, you kind of dread the new mobility because life gets a lot more complicated.

Incidentally, does anyone know how to prevent an almost-11-month-old from stripping when she takes a nap? She's darned good at removing shirts, pants, socks, and sleepers that snap up. No comments about duct tape, please (I've already considered that thought and discarded it).