As we all know, this winter has royally suuuucked.  The school district where I work has had SIXTEEN closures/delays/early dismissals due to the crazy weather, which comes out to about two per week since the first one in December.  I know I am suffering from Mommy Brain or whatever, but I thought I was living in Connecticut, not that uninhabitable part of northern Canada.  In any case, I could probably write a half dozen blog posts just about everything I am really pissed off about this winter.  From all the shoveling, to having no garage, the crazy heating bills, slipping on the sidewalk, drafty old house, stuck inside with a new baby… I know that everyone has had a really rough one and that you all totally feel my pain.  Deep breaths, everyone.

I got a gratitude journal from my mom for Christmas this year.  Not that I have been using it religiously, but I have definitely been practicing my gratitude.  Having a new baby, it is easy to get bogged down in the sleep deprivation, body fluids, and chapped nipples, and I really have tried hard to savor the sweet moments.  So in the spirit of being grateful and looking at the positive, I actually thought of one really great thing about this winter.  It is so good, actually, that it almost outweighs all the crappiness.

Thanks to our being snowed in just about every other day this winter, I have seen a lot of my husband, and he has seen a lot of our baby.

My husband is a really hard-working guy, and his job in Manhattan is the reason we live in Fairfield County (the FC, as I like to call it).  He usually gets up just after me and the baby, is out the door in a flash, and sometimes doesn’t return home until after our little girl is down for the night.  Even though a snow day working from home means that he is downstairs in his office on the computer or on conference calls for much of the day, there is certainly more leeway.  If baby girl is “talking” a lot, he can come upstairs for a minute to chat.  If she is getting ready to roll over, I can call him to come see.  And I have made a little routine of taking her down to visit him a few times a day when he is home.  He tells me that he looks forward to these moments, and she certainly loves it – he will talk to her, make her giggle, and sing her a little song in Spanish.  In short, even though he has been super busy with work, neither of us feel like he has really missed out on much of our sweet little baby’s first few months.

Thank you, shitty winter!

Oh, and the second reason I am thankful is that every storm, every dead car battery and wet sock brings my husband this much closer to moving us all to Florida.  Keep it coming, Mother Nature!