Snowmageddon

In the unlikely event that you haven’t heard, the East Coast of Newfoundland was hit with one of the worst storms we’ve ever had. Where I live in Mount Pearl 93 cm of snow fell in less than 24 hours from Friday morning to Saturday morning, and another 10-20 cm fell overnight on Sunday. We’ve been in a State of Emergency since Friday and they’ve called in the Military to help with snow clearing.

My family is all safe, we’ve stocked up on more supplies, and Shamus has cleared up as much snow as he could around our property and the neighbours’ properties. We feel very blessed to be comfortable, well-fed, and warm.

I just wanted to share a funny story from Friday night because it makes me laugh in hindsight. Before I start, I should let you know that my kids have pretty much slept for 12 hours a night since they were born so I am not used to sleep deprivation (and I do not deal well with sleep deprivation either). I know, you can hate me, but we all really love our sleep in this house.

Like many parents, on Friday night when the winds were upwards of 150 km an hour and it was near white-out conditions, I decided that I would have the kids sleep in the same room with me and Shamus just in case we lost power – I didn’t want them to wake up cold. As do most people, my kids prefer to sleep in their own beds. In preparation for our “sleepover”, I tried to make as many accommodations for them as I could. I emptied our bedroom of all unnecessary crap that we’ve accumulated and I brought in a mattress for Penny (who hates bed-sharing) so she could sleep on the floor. Rory usually enjoys sleeping in bed with me and Shamus so I wasn’t too concerned about him. 

We showed them the room, explained what was happening, and they seemed excited –  however, when bedtime arrived they refused to go to sleep. Rory was crying and screaming, Penny was singing very loudly- she’s gotten into the hilarious habit of singing the Barney theme song and/or “You are My Sunshine” whenever Rory is upset. Shamus kept dozing off because he had decided not to go to sleep after he got off his 2am-5:30 am shift (pretend there’s an eyeroll emoji here). I was frustrated trying to keep the kids laying down.  It was chaos. Shamus went with Penny to put her to sleep in her bed, and I tried to calm Rory down in our room – divide and conquer and all that. By 10pm, 2.5 hours after their original bedtimes, they were asleep.

I carried Penny into our bedroom to her mattress on the floor while she was yelling out “NOPE!” in her sleep.

Excellent – sleepover commences – except for me because now everyone is snoring and I can’t fall asleep. I finally doze off around midnight.

12:30am – Rory wakes up screaming because the dinky he was holding in his sleep dropped out of his hand. He won’t stop screaming, Penny is stirring, and a very compassionate sleepy me sings out, “Just put him in his room! I don’t care if he freezes!” I forgot that we had put crap from our bedroom into his bedroom, so cue me sleepily moving all the crap to the living room at 1am (Rory mouths too many things and climbs too many things to have any objects in his room).

4:30 am – Wake up to Penny climbing into our bed singing out for “Tabby” (her Samsung tablet) which is always in Shamus’ side table. This is a child who sleeps-in nearly every.single.day. I lay her next to me while she consistently, evenly, asks for “tabby” for the next almost 2 hours. To her credit, she didn’t actually get upset – she literally just repeated the word into my ear at different decibels until I wanted to rip my hair out.

6:20 am – I carry her in my half asleep state to her room and insist she not get up until it’s actually light out. No light actually ever gets into her room, so in hindsight, I probably confused the hell out of her.

7:05 am –  Shamus and I startle awake to what at first sounds like an alarm. Snow is so high it is ringing our doorbell incessantly. Shamus digs a hole around the doorbell.

7:15 am – We were just laugh/crying ourselves to sleep, when the doorbell starts ringing again. Shamus digs bigger hole. He was afraid to unhook the doorbell because “every time we do something to this house, something else breaks”. Our house is over 50 years old – he’s not wrong.

The kids sleep through all of this!

10:30 am – We all finally wake up to the shit show outside. We slept in so late, I think we were all hoping we’d sleep through it all.

My lesson learned from this experience? In case of emergency, my kids would rather freeze to death than share a room as a family. 

I hope everyone is warm, safe, and fed. And if you don’t actually live on the East Coast of Newfoundland, I wish you the same, but please enjoy your lack of snow for me. I’m dreaming of summer – which is something I have never, ever said before.