The Agony and the Ecstasy: Winter in Wisconsin

Here's a mystery for you: what does a family with a four year old and a one year old do ALL WINTER LONG in Wisconsin? With such little ones, any cold winter sports like ice skating, sledding, snow shoeing, and skiing are out of the question. MAYBE we could do these things if the mama and the daddy were more enthusiastic, but it's cold outside people, darn cold.

So instead we go moderately insane and make up things to do inside. Vacuuming can be a game if done correctly ( Iris spreads cheerios throughout upstairs, mommy chases her with the vacuum, Bella tries to knock me off course by banging into my vacuum with her pretend vacuum). This sort of activity can take up an entire afternoon.

For awhile we played "Who's the Sickest?", but that got old.

Today I spent a large part of the afternoon shooting footage to produce music videos of the children. Footage of Iris blowing the harmonica has been matched against a medley of heavy metal and special effects in the video "Rock Girl". Bella braved the 15 degree weather outside while shooting footage for "Rock Girl II" - yet to be edited. We have guests in town this weekend - Ryan and Betsy from our old days in New Mexico. They watched this footage with great kindness and tolerance. They understand the root cause of this insanity, having spent several days with this crew. Aunt Ali also helped this weekend by extending a regional business trip for an evening and babysitting the girls so that we could go to a rock concert. Oh- to feel young with the lights out and the music loud!

Our neighbors have been our saving grace in terms of producing activities for us. Nothing is quite as nice as coming home to an answering machine message from Molly or from Jenny with "Such-n-such is going on in town with weekend; wanna go?" We attended spagetti dinner night at the local fire department several weekends ago and had a blast. Sunday morning coffee and watching the kids play is also a new tradition.

Out of another kind of desperation, and some moderate jealousy over new home purchasing occuring in our circle lately, Todd and I have been adding decorative touches around the house. We feel very settled doing things like hanging new shower curtains and ceiling fans - we aren't rookies at this anymore. We'll be married ten years this July and I've finally figured out how happy Todd is if I just stand and hand him tools while he works on a home improvement project. It's the small things that get us through.