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It’s freezing in Miami and in the twenties in Houston. The massive onslaught of cold is turning routines upside down cross-country. According to CNN, “The temperature in Florence, South Carolina, got down to 14 on Sunday...breaking the day's record low of 18 set in 1979.” After a lively discussion on cold weather fashion on these pages, courtesy of Susan Wagner, I started thinking about how we parent when it’s really cold outside. Being a Bostoner, I’m getting experienced at making the most of shut-in parenting of a baby or toddler. As for your pets: buy some petsafe meltice and throw the dog and the cats (though they will hate it) outside for 10 minutes each day. I swear it will make them less stir-crazy.
Here are my baby lifesavers:
Find your indoor playspace. A Boston winter with a baby is something to be reckoned with. Sometimes a few days will pass and my son won’t leave the house because it's just too hard and where would you go anyway? The indoor playgym is a godsend to a winter parent. We love Together in Motion, an Arlington Mass. playspace with free play drop in times. Local churches and community centers also usually have indoor playspaces with padded blocks, balls, and other kids. For $5 or less you can kill two hours and not go stir-crazy. It’s also great to have a regular mommy-group or playdate where you can bring the baby and relax a bit. A psychiatrist friend of mine even suggested going to the mall for a walk with a baby when it’s cold and you have to get out. Nordstrom stores all have gorgeous mothers’ rooms where you can kill an hour too.
Move. We’ve developed a music routine that lifts winter blues for both of us. We have a bunch of CDs- from the new Barenaked Ladies (my husband’s favorite) to folk music and showtunes. In the winter I play more music inside, which makes both the baby and I move. It is amazing what 10 minutes of dancing around the house can do, especially when you can’t get outside to exercise.
Cook together: a toddler can bang on pots and pans while you cook and busy yourself -- while keeping an eye on the baby. I find it a good way to engage with my son when I don’t have the heart to sit on the floor and play with him. Because to me the worst part about having a baby in extreme winter is battling my own grey sky blues while entertaining and catering to the needs of a little one. When you just want to hide and drink tea, it’s hard to play blocks.
We’re all going to have to parent differently: in extreme heat and cold. This may seem like a non sequitur- but one of the most annoying things about the recent multi-state cold snap is the profusion of people snorting, “whatever happened to global warming?”
I asked my friend Letha Tawney, Senior Associate at World Resources Institute to explain how the extreme cold winter relates to climate change, and what I should say to doubters. I want to share her insight with you, so if you’re in the bus line freezing your butt off and someone shakes their head and says, “I miss global warming,” you can smile and nod but know that climate change is, sadly, still here to stay.
Letha said, “There's always been natural—and regional--variability in the weather- and that will continue. Regional variability is a huge factor. You can't look at regional weather for one winter and draw a whole picture of what the whole climate is doing. That’s why NASA and others look at the whole climate on average, and different indicators such as ice melt, pond ice, when do flowers bloom in the spring, etc. Climate change is also about shifting wind patterns and precipitation patterns so it's not just that the whole planet gets warmer every day- the whole pattern of the weather begins to shift.
Humans aren't the only thing impacting the weather. “There's still natural variability that's always existed- each decade there are frosts in Florida. The hard part is humans are putting a constant pressure in terms of putting more and more energy in the system. This constant pressure pushes the natural variability up into a warmer range. And the long-term pattern is definitely warmer. The difference is that the band of weather variability has shifted up into a warmer range so our cold
