Fighting The Winter Blues

Well, I'm sure you're all watching your social networking sites filling up with dashboard temp photos and complaints about the snow. We live in New Hampshire, don't know where that is, don't worry it's north of Massachusetts and it snows in the winter.... a LOT! In the last two or three weeks we have accumulated around three feet of snow and an inch of ice. The kids had a couple of snow days so I have had two toddlers and a 9 year old stuck in the house all day. (The temps have been hovering around 10 - 20 degrees during the day and -8 degrees over night) So as you can imagine we are freakin' bored. Usually on days like this we would grab all the couch pillows and throw blankets, toss em on the floor and pop in some fun movies. Have hot cocoa, maybe some popcorn and I like to bake something on cold days. (Lets me heat up the house without using more oil.) However, when you have four days like this in a row you get a little stir crazy. If you are not from New England you must understand, by February cabin fever is a very real thing and the results are not pretty.

It's important for, even us parents, to get outside too. Have you ever been sitting somewhere and you just look at the person next to you and think, 'I swear if that guy doesn't close his mouth to chew in the next two minutes I'm going to stuff a sock down his throat.' Or how about when you drop a pen and smack your head on the table picking it up and you think, 'That's it, we are burning this table, I never liked it anyway.' Well, we all have those thoughts but they get worse in the winter and you have got to do something about it otherwise you wind up that guy who took a chainsaw to his neighbors tree because the acorns kept falling in his yard. So what do you do?

Since this weather will last us a few more weeks, at least, I have decided to find something more active for my kids to do. We will be venturing outside today and perhaps I can get the porch shoveled before it falls off my house, but more importantly get the kids outside to play. (When it's just too cold out doing something active like hide and seek can really help.)

Simply opening you shades makes a huge difference. Even cloud diffused light is still natural light and letting it in and brightening up your house can improve your mood almost immediately. Cleaning up around the house or clearing out the areas you use most can have a similar effect. Like wise wearing brighter colors can perk you right up. On a particularly gray snowy morning (an absurd 5am) I was getting dressed and happened to remember something I read about the affect of the colors you wear impacting your mood. So on went my candy pink scarf and while this didn't make me bust into my own theme song or induce a flash mob, it did make me feel a little perkier and less like the whole world is turning gray.

I find we sometimes forget the impact our favorite things have on our emotions and our behavior. You try to frown on a jet ski! It occurred to me that these kids have been hanging around a quiet house watching the quiet snow fall, the quiet TV humming away, the quiet padding of little feet on the hardwood floors. We have a big house.. why are we being so quiet? Turn it up, I have all the music channels so I use the popular hit list and the kids seem to like it. (I have noticed they tend to like your favorite music better as you personally have a more energetic approach to it than, say, itsy bitsy spider.) So crank it, jam out a little maybe even turn this into a crazy playtime. Sometimes we will pull out all the funny hats and scarves for the kids to wander around in and they love it.

 Just a little silliness can cure that case of the blahs but sometimes there is only one thing that really works and that is simply bundling up and getting outside. Blow up a tube or dig out that sled and enjoy the powder because it's only a matter of time before the snow stops and we go back to 90 degrees with 110 percent humidity. Then we can go back to figuring out how to beat the heat.

As always feel free to leave your ideas and thoughts on breaking up your winter blahs. Send us some photos of you and your little one enjoying the winter wonderland and you could be featured in the next post.