Big Blizzard Thing

Okay, so it wasn't so much a "blizzard," per say, but it was a lot of snow. A LOT of snow.

Six inches of beautiful, slippery snow falling for nearly 12 straight hours yesterday. People were sliding all over the roads -- enough for officials to close the interstate for several hours -- and our department's assistant dean let everyone go home early to "get ahead of the weather." Only a half an hour early, mind you, but it was something anyway. And, what with it taking nearly 45 minutes to drive what in normal conditions a 10-minute drive, it turned out to be just enough time to get us home at our normal time. It really is a process to drive even short distances in snowy weather -- first you've got to trudge through unshoveled snow to get to the car, then you have to brush all the snow off of the car and scrape the ice off the windows, then drive 10 miles an hour because that's what the car in front of you is doing, then have difficulty getting started again once the light turns green because your traction isn't so good, then you have to get out and brush snow off your window again because you can't see anything. You get the idea. While there's not too much more snow predicted in the coming days, they are telling us to get used to what we've got because, given the fact that the temperatures will not even be close to rising above freezing in the foreseeable future, this snow's not going to melt for a while.

And so we stayed in last night. And we babysat. Which was an adventure like unto driving on snowy, icy roads. All right, so it wasn't that bad, but there was a lot of screaming involved. Turns out little Adeline is a mama's girl and likes to show off her incredible lung capacity for everyone else. So while Blake and I tried calming her with toys, board books, a bottle, fresh diapers, and clean pajamas, she cried and choked on her tears and spit up all over me and screamed. Soon there was nothing more I could do but pull our rocking chair into the bedroom, turn on some music, and just rock her until she wore herself out, found her thumb, and fell asleep. She woke up just before her parents came back to get her, and as soon as she realized they were back, she was all smiles and grins. A little unfair? Maybe. At least Blake and I were both able to come to the solid conclusion that cute babies are indeed capable of inducing headaches, but that even in spite of this, we are still glad to be expecting one of our own.