Snow Day!

This makes me so sad—it’s the second huge snowstorm of the year and I just want to play with Niall in the snow. I bet we won’t have another winter like this for at least 5 years. I feel like the last time we got this much snow was 1996. I absolutely love all snow activities- throwing snow balls, making snow angels, making snow men, eating snow… you name it, I love snow games. On the last big snow of the season, I got really excited, bundled him up, took him outside and realized “hmm… ok, that was fun, I guess we’ll go back inside now.” It’s not like I can throw a snowball at him. So I took a few pix and called it a day.

This time, people seemed much more prepared for the big snow than last time. People are acting like it’s the end of the world. I went to Costco with some friends last night and there must have been 600 people there and they were not friendly! Right as we were walking in, someone stole the grocery cart right out of our hands! I’m so glad I didn’t have Niall with me. It would have been impossible to accomplish anything. But since Costco was out of almost everything, I had to make a trip to Safeway this morning and Niall really threw me under the bus…

Every line was at least 20 people long, so I decide to do the self-checkout. I’m a pro at it and it usually goes really fast. I’ve been to the grocery store with Niall about 5 or 6 times so far and he’s NEVER made a peep. I keep him in his car seat in the cart and he just looks around or sleeps. Well, I’m down to about 4 people in front of me when he starts screaming. I just kept thinking “Oh please not now- not with all these people here. I’m going to get killed!” So I knew if I just took him out of the car seat and held him, he’d be fine. I had enough time, so I did. Then, the moment I was dreading- it was my turn.

I put him back in the car seat without strapping him in and kept whispering little threats like “I know you’re going to be a good boy for mommy for just a minute, right?”…. No way, no how. He started flailing his arms and legs and trying to launch himself out of the car seat. So at this point, I decide to hold him with one arm and scan with the other. It was a nightmare! -- Until this saint of a woman came over after she finished checking out and helped me by scanning all of my groceries, bagging them and reassuring me that we’ve all been there at some point. She was so nice and I don’t know what I would have done without her. I found it a little disturbing that the Safeway employee on the self-checkout just watched us and made no attempt to help. Oh well.

But we made it and now we’re just looking out the window at the snow- there’s already 6 inches. It’s going to be a long snowed in weekend (maybe longer!).