Winter slog

Soooo chilly these days.  We have the winter gift that keeps on giving (a crappy cold) at our house.

We got about 8" of snow in the first substantial storm to hit the area this winter, which resulted in epic grid-lock for people trying to get home.  I'd driven into the city that morning and on the way out around 3:00, drove through rain, then hail, then sleet, then snow in the near 2-hour drive to go 10 miles to get the kids out of day-care.  Some people took upwards of 6 hours to go 20 or 30 miles...insane! S had to work that night and it was an eerie night out shoveling, watching the lightening shock the sky bright blue, hearing thunder rumble, and then the tell-tale hiss/boom of a transformer blowing in a flash of green as the street lights flicker off. Thunder-snow? For real? Have you see War of Worlds?? Spooky.

Our little princess. 

I was reading a parenting article recently and they had an interesting commentary on the princess fixation for little girls in today's society.  They rated Ariel from the Little Mermaid (give up mermaid-dom for a man) and Sleeping Beauty (needs a prince to have a life) pretty low. The commercialized onslaught of "must have" products like the get-up above targeting the preschool set smoothly transitions into the Hanna/Miley music/dance focus, with these young girls in full make-up and bustiers prancing on stage and cooing over $1,200 handbags.  Yikes.  

The remote control car corners pretty well! And the rock music that the controller plays prompts spontaneous groovy moves from Caleb, so all around a great gift.

Hubby solicited the kids to help prime the front room which is now a lovely shade of blue. 

1950 Cape Cod = constant repair agenda

 Current book favorites: Oh No! Not Ghosts! Jack and the Beanstalk.  Fox in Socks. Horton Hears a Who.  And unlimited iterations on Inchy the Inch-worm that I made up who goes on adventures planned from the safety of his warm green leaf.



 The new library they opened around the corner from us is fantastic...tons of books and something like 50 books you can take home at a time, and keep for 3 weeks (and movies, too!) They picked out a French DVD that has the kids saying, "Encore une fois!" 

 We were the only crazy folk at the park a couple of weekends ago.  We were trolling around looking at a neat little neighborhood of candy-painted Victorians not far from our favorite breakfast place when we came on a part.  Of course we had appropriate winter attire for the kids, and S and I froze as we'd forgotten to grab hats, gloves, and scarves on the way out. 

In truth, we all only lasted about 15 minutes before the siren song of hot chocolate was too much to bear....