What to do with a snow day?

February 13, 2008 | family, Original NSS, parenting

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We’re having a snow day here in the upstate New York, and not even a really good snow day where you can go outside and build snow creatures and slide down hills. No, this is the kind of snow day where you look outside and say, “What, the buses couldn’t get through that?” (At least that’s what I said.) We’ve got a few inches of snow coated in an icy slush with a touch of freezing rain to make going outside completely unbearable.

So here we are inside. All day. Chiara is already screaming for television. Candy Land has been played (and if you read yesterday’s post, you know how I feel about that).  Noah and Olivia have used Google Earth to try to view the Holy Land, the Eiffel Tower, their school and their best friends’ houses. They find it fascinating, although I think the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the house around the corner all look kind of the same from this bird’s eye view.

It’s not even 10 a.m. and, quite frankly, I’ve had it. I remember loving snow days when I was a kid, but I really just don’t get the appeal any more, even from a kid’s viewpoint. I mean, why not be in school, hanging out with your friends, rather than home with a cranky mom who is now going to expect you to clean your room, write out 25 Valentine’s Day cards, finish your Frankenstein paper, and come up with five books to donate to someone else (a suggestion from a Lenten calendar we’re using). Surely reading War of the Worlds in class (Noah) or studying the concept of “force” in science (Olivia) has to be better than this.

I know there are moms out there — maybe even reading this right now — who would look at this day as a blank slate just waiting to be filled with crafts made out of leftover popsicle sticks and surplus yarn from their many knitting projects. I do have popsicle sticks and, surprisingly enough, skeins and skeins of yarn from my failed attempt at knitting. But I don’t see myself going anywhere with that today.

There was a time, back in Noah’s preschool days, when I might have taken the creative approach, but now, with three kids at home, a pile of work on my desk, and a house that looks like a small tornado passed through dropping children’s shoes over every square inch of empty space, I’m seeing the day more like a blank stare, like the one the kids are giving me now in hopes that their desperate looks will inspire me to say, “Watch a TV show.”

Tune in later to see how this day works out. Will we make a craft? Will we clean the house? Will we come up with some fun kid-safe recipe that everyone can make together for dinner? Or will this end up like some scene out of Lord of the Flies, where the yarn and popsicle sticks are used for evil instead of good?

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