Adventures in parenting: The snow day edition

Playing on the mound created by the snowplow on a SNOW DAY

This past Friday, both my kids had a snow day. Although this is probably surprising to those who don't live here but hear about all the snow the Cleveland area receives, it's relatively rare for our school district to cancel school for snow. Our city is small, area-wise, and quite urban, so at least the main streets get cleared pretty quickly. Plus, we're not in the "snow belt" part of the area, so we get less snow than those east of us.

So of course the kids were thrilled (we had a potential crisis when we thought Reece still had to go, and the UNFAIRNESS of it all), and Dan and I scurried to figure out what we would do with the two all day. Neither of our jobs was canceled, of course.

I had scheduled a hair appointment for 9am (and REALLY wanted to make that), then a meeting a 1:15pm at work, and then my welcome-to-40 baseline mammogram at 4pm in Dan's office building. Luckily, Dan doesn't start work until 1pm on Fridays, so we had some leeway. I went to the salon while Dan got the kids fed and dressed and called all the high school age babysitters we knew to see if they wanted to hang out with the boys for the afternoon. Turns out, they had all already made plans with friends and must have had sufficient spending money, or all the other parents got to them first, because they all turned us down. So, we moved on to plan B. While waiting for my hair to dry, I emailed work to say I wouldn't make the meeting (and then got a reply that they were canceling the meeting anyway because so many people were going to miss it). Then I headed home in time for Dan to leave, and we planned on having the kids hang out in his office when I had my boob-squooshing appointment.

Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for lunch after playing outside

I packed up the boys and their respective Nintendo DSes, made sure they went to the bathroom, and dropped them off with Dan and a lovely fruit arrangement one of his students had given him. When I returned, only Greyson was in the office. Now, if only Reece had been there, I wouldn't have been concerned because Greyson has hung out there on his own before and knows his way around, and also, he's 9. No Reece was definitely cause for alarm. So I asked Greyson where his brother was, and he said in the bathroom with Dad. It turns out, Reece suddenly had to go #2 and Dan was with a patient. We hadn't prepped Greyson on what to do in this situation, so his advice to Reece was, "Hold it in, but if you can't, just go in the garbage can!" Luckily, it didn't come to that. I raced to the bathroom where I thought they would be and relieved Dan so he could get back to seeing his patients (and you wondered why doctors are behind schedule - now you know!). I was greeted by a surprisingly calm but ready to escape husband and a very happy, chatty boy washing his hands and COVERED in strawberry remnants. Apparently, the fruit arrangement put up a fight. My one regret is that in all the commotion, I forgot to take his picture before we washed it all off.