Cabin Fever

Well, it's winter and we live in Maine so it's pretty damn cold out and there is plenty of snow on the ground. Sounds kind of pretty right? It is, but it's getting old for me and I fear that I'm the only one. The boys seem content to hang out at home. Ben's playing Legos almost eight hours each day and building bigger and better things than the day before. Nate is riding his rocking horse plenty (training for a career as a jokey?), playing with his new train table and stirring up mischief with his brother.

They're both also watching plenty of tv and this makes me a little bit sad and relieved. I had always wanted to be the mom who didn't let her kids watch tv at all and they would be wildly creative and inspired constantly and never crave the tv. We would spend our days making elaborate craft projects, home science experiments and reading huge stacks of books from the library. Well, that sounds wonderful and I know there are families out there (many of my friends' families) who enjoy this lifestyle - we just aren't there yet and I'm not sure that I care to be. Yes, there is a ton of crap tv on, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that my kids are watching just PBS or Discovery Channel. They watch Spongebob, Nate is obsessed with Dora, these are simple facts of our life. But there's actually some decent stuff out there and you know what? TV hasn't ruined my kids. Plugging my kids into the tv and ignoring them for the day, yeah that would ruin them. Letting them make choices about what they want to watch and roughly how much they watch...I think that's letting them express some free will and that's a good thing.

So, for now we're just doing the best we can to get through each day here. We are getting our snow tires put on tomorrow so there is hope that we'll be a bit more mobile in the remaining winter months (there are at least two full ones ahead of us) and that should help to shake off the cabin fever. But, if we are to remain stuck inside until the spring thaw there are worse people to share the days with and worse ways to spend the days than curled up on the couch watching a movie under a comfy blanket.