It Always Depends on the Weather

Here in the Arctic, everything depends on the weather. The funny thing is that it is ALWAYS cold and windy. It is a complete mystery to me how the locals distinguish between cold, really cold and too cold. Maybe everyone has their own thermostat and it is different for everyone; but, like I said, it is a mystery to me.

Hubby just bought 2 used snowmobiles from a guy in town so that we could go have some form of outdoor recreation to do as a family. The first time out, we thought that it would be good to leave Kaia with a sitter and have a Play Date in the powder. Well, turns out that the powder is patchy and the rest is just crusty ice. Anyway, yesterday, we figured we would go run some errands around town and take Kaia with us.

We bundled her up in fleece, hat, boots, wool socks, snowsuit and stuck her in between us on the snowmobile. Her snowsuit sleeves are long enough to cover up her hands and we figured we would make sure no baby parts would be exposed, so we decided NOT to bind her up in gloves that would probably fall off between anywhere and nowhere.

The temperature was reading 5 with wind chill of -15, but I know it was colder than that when we cruised head-on into the blowing wind. Kaia seemed to be okay, and we checked her every stop to make sure that fingers, cheeks and body temp were still within acceptable range. Apparently, my hands were too cold to tell how cold her hands were. When we got home, she started screaming and holding her fingers out like they had just given her the worst offence she had ever received.

I can only imagine what it is like to experience the thaw process for the first time. The aching and stinging and needle like tingling that happens when feeling finally returns to frozen fingers is miserable even for adults who know what is going on. The good news is that there was no permanent damage done. I was pretty scared for about 5 minutes though, and kept checking for the rest of the day to make sure that her fingers still had good color, feeling and mobility.

It was one of those “Mommy of the Year” moments when I realized how dumb it was to bring baby out in such harsh conditions. Comparatively, we thought it was quite nice. It was no where near the -50 we experienced this winter and the wind was calm enough not to pummel us with ice shards. I guess that they don’t make good baby gear for extreme weather conditions and we didn’t have enough layers on to accommodate that fact. Anyway, I learned my lesson and will be a LOT more careful in the future.

What else can I do? It is not good for us to stay in the house all day. We have to get out sometime, and the temperatures are better now than we have ever experienced here. Though the learning experience was tramatic, we are not detered. Kaia and I have plans to go out with a few friends this afternoon for some sledding. There is a gravel pit not too far from here, where there might be some good snow piles for little plastic sleds. I don’t know how long they all plan to be out, but I do know that there will be a warm vehicle there for Kaia to escape the cold. We will NOT be repeating the trauma of yesterday.

I know now that my thermostat for what is “too cold” is not set nearly as high as my little Kaia’s. I just figured that we had her bundled enough to accommodate the difference. Even though the poor thing couldn’t put her arms down with all the bundle of snowsuit she had on, it wasn’t enough. I wish that she came with an owners manual that stated the temperature range for safe and happy operation. Or, at the very least, I wish she could talk and let me know when she was getting uncomfortable.

I’ll post up pix of the planned snow adventures for today, and let you know how the bundeling thing goes tomorrow. For now I will sit here and contemplate mysteries of which clothing items to ‘don first, how best to check for frozen baby syndrome and why the hell the wind always comes from the direction I want to go. Make it a good one and enjoy the beautiful weather wherever you are.