Snow Pants

Enter the whining mother of a child in public school in the lovely snowy NorthWest US. Ugh. So it snowed a bit last night which meant that Moose had to wear his snow gear to school today. Apparently unless it's like 0 degrees outside, they still play outside for recess. Joy. This lovely addition adds like 15 minutes to our getting out the door to get him to school. For those of you not familiar with winter gear, please, let me enlighten you.

Starting with Moose. Normal clothes: check. Snow boots. Snow coat. Hat. Gloves. Tennis shoes. Snow Pants. (Obviously these are not the order in which he puts things on.) Although we do add backpack to that list. Apparently it's a lot harder to get on with all that gear on. And to add to that list (We didn't have one this morning, but will be getting one.) a bag to carry home his wet gear every day. (This isn't like a plastic bag. This is like a big Mom-sized beach tote. You know, those big beasty ones.) Okay. One child done.

Next is Monkey. She's requires a touch less gear, although she likes to think that whatever her brother has she needs to have also. It hasn't caused too many problems, although it caused one today. Will elaborate further. She wears her normal clothes. Add snow coat, boots and a hat. Moose is required to dress himself in all his gear to spare his teachers from dressing 26 kids each recess. So he can zip his coat. By some miraculous feat of luck, Monkey also zipped her own coat this morning. (Apparently on Sunday she spent most of the first hour standing in an aisle zipping and unzipping her coat, so the hubs tells me. I was elsewhere at the time.) However, when it was time to pick Moose up from school, the little miss assumes she can now zip her own coat. Sorry to break it to you darling, that totally won't happen again for a few years. So it took an extra 5 minutes for me to get her to let me zip her coat. And yes, I managed it by threatening to leave without her. Which no, I wouldn't do. But she didn't know that.

Last is Munchkin. She's the easiest. We have a dandy snow suit that you zip her into. It's like a big pink, fuzzy, feety jammies with a hood and mittens. I like to call her pinky when she wears it.

So, that's our get out the door routine thanks to Mother Nature. Probably will last til, I don't know, April. If not May. Never know how bad the winter will be.

Oh, and to add to all that fun (remember, today was the first day Moose wore all this stuff) Moose came home with someone else's snow pants. His are blue, with his name on them. These ones are black, with someone else's name on them. Sigh. Oh, and I just got his lunchbox back from a 2 day vacation in the 4th grade classroom lunch bag tub. Another story, I suppose. Tomorrow we go on the look-out for his snow pants. Oh, the joys of school.