Snow Day......

Is it inappropriate to dedicate a yoga practice to the yellow school bus which will indeed arrive on Park Street tomorrow morning—two hours late but whatever? I’ve been fantasizing about this yoga class since 6:55 when I wrote Lydia to see if it was occurring. Here are just a few highlights from snow day number 1001 which I had the pleasure of enjoying with my children today. It is in fact my teaching day but the snow gods have bestowed so many snow days on Mon and Weds which are the province of super Dad that it became clear that if I wanted to come home to three children and a husband all in one piece it was worth imposing on the TA’s to show music 101 the Amadeus movie. (Thank you Maria and Lannier) I practically shoved super Dad out the door today out of self preservation, not altruism. My professional activities for today consisted of rescheduling meetings which we’ve all been doing for three weeks now hitting reply to all on an email thereby insulting colleagues from 5 departments. Note to self do not respond to emails before 7 in the morning during snopocalpyse especially if you have a temptation towards phrases like patriarchal structure of this arcane institution. And also try not to write to people in French which might inspire to use a slightly inappropriate salutation which is also insulting.

This morning’s yoga practice was not exactly restful. Rebecca and Jonathan at 3 loved to do exercise videos with me and did a lot of supportive clapping and cute imitating. Give a militarized second son a yoga video and it’s a whole different situation. Inhale deeply is quickly turned into “I impale your booty mommy” Who knew that the phrase “surrender to the breath” could turn in to “Suwenda bad guys I am a clone warrior” And yes if you are to do a proper warrior pose it’s important to have a hat that doubles your height, a sparkly cape and a flaccid sword to wave about. Rebecca spent the first ten minutes of the video looking for a shirt “with a bra in it so my boobs wont move around” and the second asking all kinds of questions about Rodney Yi. Then she commenced the most aggressive adjustments I’ve ever had. Her finale involved a rousing game of crawl under Mommy’s downward dog. So again thank you Lydia for a real Yoga treat this evening.

I know that every parent and child in cville is at this point loosing their mind and that those people who fantasize about bonding snow days and hot coco don’t actually stay home and have forgotten how cold and wet snow is after a few days. But I am completely sure that my kid needs more than any other to be back in school. For the last 48 hours Jonathan has been literally running laps around the couch which would be fine if it didn’t also involve running past his brother, hitting him on the head, and then running up to time out and slamming the door. This is a child who needs structure. We had lunch today with two other mothers and a total of 8 kids and it was pretty clear that mine was the worst behaved in the bunch—and he had some stiff competition. Lunch came not a moment to soon since Rebecca and Maya, another fahionista six year old, had completed 98% of the process involved in ordering a pair of $425 red stiletto boots from Zappos. Note to parents of first graders make sure you never turn on one click settings. (I already knew that thankfully) And Dad if you’re reading this stop now but we did drive to the downtown mall old school style with five kids and two adults in a Subaru station wagon—it actually until we saw a cop walking by us, seemed less dangerous than walking with tantruming children on ice. (After about 30 seconds of hesitation I flashed back to zipping around rome in taxi cabs and decided we were good to go)

After days of keeping very strict limitations on TV when five kids asked if they could watch TV the answer was an enthusiastic yes, please take your places on the couch and yes you can have cookies while watching. I did in between episodes make them do jumping jacks and sun salutations. I used TV time to clean up the 180 vehicles ElI played with today. I’m not making that number up. I purchased for Chanukah at CVS a plastic vat if 180 vehicles for $9 and forgot to give it to him. I whipped it out today and let’s just say you get what you pay for…..

So at 9:00 today I went so far as to open up my backpack and make a nice neat pile of articles and notes for an article I need to revise by at least a month ago. Needless to say nothing brilliant has emerged just yet but thanks to the yellow but I’m sure the juices will flow tomorrow.