The Results of Three Days Inside

To put it plainly, the weather has sucked lately. And I'm not talking about the snow. I love snow. It does make for dangerous driving conditions, but at least it's pretty. I'm talking about rain. And lots of rain. And grey days. Today, in fact, was the first day in all of February so far that the sun decided to make an appearance. As soon as Ethan was up from his nap, I slapped his coat on and got him into our SUV stroller, the jogger. It has super thick wheels that can roll right over the snow, though not always easily. We walked outside for a good 25 mintues, then Will met us out and he continued the walk while I left to tutor. It was a good dose of vitamin D.

But this week has been particularly rough weatherwise, and, by Wednesday, it had taken it's toll. Wednesday was the day that it was raining in the morning and then it turned to snow by the afternoon. Ethan and I stayed in all day and I was so desperate to get out of the house that I called Will and told him if he came home while there was still daylight, I would LOVE to shovel the driveway. Ambitious? No. Going a bit cuckoo from so many grey days inside and feeling like I might have to get on top of a roof with a machine gun soon? Yes.

So I got bundled up and went outside to tackle our quite long driveway. Will had warned me that the snow was very wet and, therefore, heavy. The newscasters called it heart attack snow. I was confident that if I took it in small enough sections, I could easily clear the drive in, say, 20 minutes.

I'm still confident that that would have been the case, but we'll never know. Because this is what I decided to do instead....

Meet Oscar the Snowman! Oscar was, by far, the most difficult snowman I have ever made. I was telling a friend I didn't really build him, I more sculpted him. The traditional snowperson building techniques were not to be attempted with this kind of icy snow. I had to simply make giant mounds and then mold a circle out of the mounds by chipping away at them with my mitten-clad hand. A lot of elbow grease; wet knees from kneeling in my non-waterproof pants; way too much time spent looking for material for his face; disdain from Will when he realized I was not shoveling; and yet, oh so worth it. Don't you think?

In other news, Ethan had another appointment with his orthotist today, and his head continues to improve. We are having his head scanned March 25th and we will have even more accurate measurements of the improvement and will also get an idea of how much longer he will need it. By the time of his scan, he will have had the helmet just shy of 3 months. Their original guess was that he would have it at least 3-4 months, so we'll see. As long as it's off before it starts getting too hot, I'll be happy. I'm definitely going to keep it to use during his learning to walk phase. I figure it will come in pretty handy then.