Snowed in

Well, we are in the midst of the big snowstorm that's hit the Midwest. Jeremy is working from home, Elli is crying because she wants to play with Daddy instead of taking her nap like she's supposed to be doing (even though she's so tired she can't stand herself), and I am trying to keep my sanity between the crying from the little one and the frustration Jeremy is evincing.

Anyhoo... knowing that the snow was coming, Elli and I decided to take a trip out on Monday to the previously mentioned Cincinnati Tea House to try some Bubble Tea. (Because instead of stocking up on milk and bread like any other good "snow preparer" around here, we had to make sure we got our favorite Taiwanese treat. There's some sort of moral / revealing factoid in this action, I think....) The verdict: It was good, but I should have asked them to make it with milk and regular tea like we got it in Taiwan, as their default way of making it is to just put in tea and flavored syrup.

Monday night the snow started falling, and we had a good 3 inches by the time we woke up on Tuesday. I decided that we should engage in the traditional "first snow day of the year" activity for my family: Cleaning out the Pantry. It took us a good majority of the day, but I now have a kitchen with a clean pantry and some clean cabinets. (Did I mention I love organizing?)

By the afternoon, I had reached a good stopping point on the pantry, so I decided we should bundle up Elli and take her out for her first set of pictures of playing in the snow. She started off mad at me because she was very hot from being bundled up, but calmed down when we went outside.

I got a picture of her sitting in the front yard:

Moments after this picture as I was trying to get one of her looking at me, she decided she wanted to crawl and ended up doing a total face plant into the snow. I snapped at just the wrong time for a second sitting under the tree shot, but caught her getting up out of the face plant. That was it for the pictures because the snow is COLD and on the face it is NOT FUN. Elli was also not pleased by the fact that Mommy kept giggling at her and Daddy kept asking, "Did you get a picture of that?" while we attempted to wipe her face, get her out of her snowsuit and otherwise comfort her.

It was much safer for Elli to generate a "winter wonderland" scene of her own -- with the peppermint Lifesavers I found in the pantry (who knew we had them??).


Today we've been hanging around inside the house, and Elli has been up to her usual tricks... untying Grandma's shoes for the 10,000th time, and trying to figure out how Mommy's camera works. (You can get a good shot of her two bottom teeth in the last picture. The top ones have got to be coming in soon judging from her level of distress and need for frozen pacifiers lately.)