Day 80: Snow Day #1
I was just as excited as the MY kids, and as all my students I'm sure, when the snowstorm on Friday was big enough for all the schools to close before they even opened. I got the call at 6AM - I was basically waiting by the phone (thanks to my lovely Christine, I had been monitoring the whiteout since 5AM!!!).Being home with all 3 kids means absolutely no school-related work being done of course. I can barely manage 5 minutes alone to go to the bathroom... Hubby also "worked" from home since it would have been crazy for him to drive downtown in such road conditions...
In the afternoon, we made the trek out to a big mall nearby, to get the kids'picture taken with Santa.
My son decided he didn't feel like hitting the mall and protested. I explained that mothers endure their kids all year, wipe bums and noses (not with the same piece of tissue of course, and if there was only one piece of paper, it would be done nose first), change bedsheets full of vomit, and constantly live a war-devastated looking area because the mess-creating rate is greater than the motherly pick-up-mess rate. The ONLY thing mothers look forward to is that yearly picture with Santa. He was stunned and quietly put on his winter coat and went out to the van without further prompting.
All kids love Santa. Any grown person who willingly dresses in red exclusively, has a hippie-lookie beard and a socially-accepted weight problem HAS to be cool.
But my girls are still TERRIFIED - even though they are very very aware of the whole Santa protocol which, if described by them, would be this:
"A big dude lands on roof after being pulled by some kind of horses adults keep calling "rain-dears" even though there is not a drop of rain in sight, he somehow slides down the chimney and lands in this dark hole we have not used in 3 years because our parents are too afraid we'll throw some of our toys in there while it's lit, or even worse, we'll burn our little hands, and our parents will have to spoonfeed us again like when we were little. This year, Santa will take our pacifiers in exchange for toys. Last year, he left with all of our milk bottle and left us some cool toys. It's a good exchange - this man obviously does NOT look for fair barters."
And so for a couple days last week they were dreading the day we would take them to the mall. And when we headed there on Friday, they were shaking. Once at the mall, they observed him from about 20 feet away for a good 5 minutes, until I had had it and said "That's enough - picture time!".
My son happily hopped onto Santa's lap, no doubt causing some kind of knee injury. Meanwhile, the girls stood close by (they never got close enough to sit on his other lap) and they were weeping in terror.
I have no idea what a "stand by Santa and cry" picture looks like - I guess I'll see that later today when I pick it up.
And so went my first snow day as a teacher. Not bad, hen?
