Snow day....aka Entertaining a Two Year Old.

I would like to mention that I live in what has got to be one of the most miserable, relentlessly cold and boring parts of the world. The only reason we live here is because they pay my husband a ridiculous amount of money to do a job where he ends up, from what I can tell, watching lots of movies and tv series. If someone asks me to describe my husbands job I just mumble something about the oil patch and leave it at that. Unfortunately this also entails a specific type of life for us as a family. The life of the oil patch consists of hours that the law doesn't seem to apply to, being called out at anytime of the day or night to do...we already covered this, who knows what...and is dictated by one of my husband's favourite sayings " pack for a month and hope for a day." If you haven't already put the idea together it pretty much means I am a single parent with a substantial pay cheque but no where to really spend it. This may sound like a blessing in disguise to many people out there, which sometimes it can be, but usually it makes for really long days left to find things to do with two kids under the age of two.
Today is worse than most days. I can't say that I didn't have warning as the little Weather Eye Icon at the bottom of my laptop screen began to flash a menacing lightning bolt surrounded by a deep crimson red yesterday afternoon. This is NEVER a good sign. We went from a -2 degrees C (quite liveable) morning to -25 degrees C with a wind-chill of -37 degrees (oh what does the type of degree really matter -37 is EFFING cold in all types of degrees) in less than 24 hours. With this drop in temperature also came the snow. My house is in the utmost perfect location to build up snowdrifts that could rival the glacier sizes in Jasper. All my friends with older children have been indicating the buses have been shut down for the day due to the bad weather. So it's a snow day.
As a kid a snow day was a glorious, rare and beautiful thing. As a parent, well it means using up some of your patience portion of your brain to be creative and try to entertain your children. I almost thought I was in for a treat because my husband came home first thing this morning after an early start to the day. No sooner was that hope dashed because the excess snow also meant he had co-workers that needed saving due to vehicular breakdown and my husband's always good in a bind to go help out those fellow oil patchions in need. Once again I was left to my own devices.
My daughter will be two in less than a month. She’s beginning to embark on that lovely journey into temper tantrums, attitude and in need of constant attention so she doesn’t destroy the house. It is up to me as the “adult” to try to keep her from killing herself, her brother or the various animals we have roaming around, which also means keeping her entertained because otherwise she makes it her goal to put herself and others at terminal risk.
I had to call off our usual walking date with a girlfriend of mine and her daughter. Not because we actually walk outside in this but because we’re scared that the hour we spend on the town’s indoor walking track will have us stepping back out to frozen cars and roads not fit for a dog sled team. Which for the same reasons also meant that the Tuesday visit to the Pre-School Centre is off too. Not like I’d even get out of the driveway due to my own personal rival to the Athabasca-Glacier forming right before my very eyes. What is my point you may ask. My point is I have now eliminated two of the options I use to keep my sanity. Exercise for me and exercise for my kids. I am stuck once again indoors keeping the children occupied by myself.
First thing this morning on went the TV tuned to the Blu-ray player which is constantly on repeat with my daughter’s current favorite “ABC’s with Elmo“. I may be a “bad parent” using my TV as a babysitter but tell me what else I’m supposed to do with her when I’ve got to get my 4 month old son ready for the day (plus a bonus to this DVD is my daughter now knows her ABC’s). Since then I’ve done flashcards with her, given her at least 10 time-outs for various breaks in the rules, let her paint in her coloring book, cleaned paint off of the floor, brought some snow in the house to play with, had 6 tea parties, played a minimum of 10 games of peek-a-boo, stopped her from pulling tails of the dog and cats, played dress up princess party, fed her breakfast, lunch and snack and read various books that all consist of less than 20 words and are full of vibrant photographs and in between have accomplished regular house chores (mainly the never ending mountains of laundry and dishes) and all the duties that come with the 4 month old baby (too many more to list). By nap time (2pm in my house) I’ve used up my entire creativity/patience for the day. I’m pooped and would love to use this nap time constructively but I find myself gravitating towards some “me-time” and sitting here writing this blog which my son is making very difficult because he would like some of my attention now too.
So I’m crossing my fingers for some better weather tomorrow. After two days in a row of this my daughter is no longer the danger to the household but Godzilla Mommy who is going to go stir crazy, ape shit.