Friday night, it started snowing and it didn’t stop until after 11pm Saturday night. I’m not sure how much snow was dumped on Manhattan in total (2 ft, I think?), but it was enough to close all roads to cars, including the highways, bridges and tunnels into the city.

Lockdown!

Despite the snow, I had a playdate planned with Seri (more on that tomorrow) at 9:30am. Since she is about a 15 minute walk from our apartment, I didn’t see any reason to cancel. I dressed the kids in winter gear (minus Mazzy’s snow boots because we couldn’t find them; we used rain boots with ski socks instead), let Mike off the hook for the morning and left the apartment with two kids in tow.

Mazzy was excited for the trek but it took Harlow all of five seconds before she flipped out because the snow was blowing in her face. The girl does not do well with changes to her environment. In her defense, it was a blizzard and pretty f’n windy.

We backtracked to the lobby of our building and I called Uber, always my go-to mode of transportation when I’m with the kids and can’t hang out on street corner trying to flag down a cab. Uber arrived in about two minutes, drove us over and we played as planned.

The reason the playdate was so early was because Gavin had a birthday party at 1pm. Once Seri got the email that the party was canceled, there was no reason to leave. Seri and I set the kids up with a movie and chatted over coffee.

All was well.

At about 1pm, we heard the news that they were closing the roads at 2:30pm.

No big deal, I had an hour and a half to get the kids home. I opened my Uber app to call a car, which greeted me with a pop-up:

Uh-oh.

There was a not a chance in hell I was walking both kids back myself through the storm. I mean, I could walk on my own no problem, but I know my kids and they wouldn’t be able to handle it. Harlow would make me carry her the entire way (which is next to impossible when everybody is wearing heavy slippery snow gear) and Mazzy would start whining and crying and refusing to move from the second we stepped out the door. Especially if my arms were occupied with Harlow.

I figured, worse came to worse, we could all just stay at Seri’s for the night until it blew over. Everyone started joking around about how we were trapped and would have to stay there forever, which (sensitive being that she is) made Harlow start to cry.

“It’s okay, Harlow! We are not really trapped!”

“I WANT TO GO HOME!!!!”

“Okay, don’t worry, sweetie. We will go home. I promise.”

I called Mike to save us.

About a half hour later (after Seri’s husband had picked us up the very last pizza pie before the pizza place locked it’s doors), Mike arrived with two toboggans.

“Perfect!!!!”

Except for one thing. Harlow refused to get in her toboggan.

“You can sit in the toboggan with Mazzy.”

“NOOOOOOOO!!!!”

Maybe once we were dressed and ready to go outside, she would change her mind?

FYI, Harlow’s outfit was unintentionally hilarious. I dressed her in that red and white dress for the playdate (it’s for Valentine’s Day themed post) and brought the snowpants in my bag in anticipation that the blizzard would get worse by the time we went home. I did not realize she would look like “Where’s Waldo?” once the outfit came together.

Once outside, Harlow still refused to sit in the toboggan.

Mazzy was excited for sledding and Mike pulled her across Manhattan, as I struggled to keep up since my task was (as I predicted) holding Harlow.

At some point, I absolutely could not hold Harlow anymore and switched responsibilities with Mike.

Dragging a toboggan in high winds was really no picnic either, but at least Mazzy was having fun. Anytime, you can do something out of the ordinary on the streets of Manhattan is a good experience to have.

When we got back, Mike decided to take Mazzy to the park to go sledding. I would have liked to go to, but Harlow clearly didn’t want anything to do with the snow so we stayed back.

As a mom with a serious case of FOMO, I’m realizing more and more that having two kids means you can’t always be on the fun side of events. Sometimes you have to stay home while your spouse does the good stuff.

About a half hour later, Mazzy and Mike were back anyway, because Mazzy didn’t have the proper footwear (I really hope her snow boots are at the house) and was miserable.

At least I didn’t miss out on too much.

The next day, we spent most of the morning indoors, then went out to brunch and walked over to my sister’s apartment to play indoors.

On the way, Mazzy noticed a cop car buried in snow which she thought was hilarious. You can see a sliver of the blue NYPD logo peaking out. I have no idea how she spotted it.

Mike and I both really wanted to do something fun in the snow with the girls but we knew, even though the weather was perfect for it, Harlow would be unhappy, Mazzy would be understandably upset about her feet and nobody would have as much fun as we imagined.

If we trekked all the way up to Central Park, which I’m sure would have been GORGEOUS, there would have been little to do with Harlow if she freaked out and wanted to go home.

So with the exception of the walk over to my sister’s (which was an event in itself), we stayed inside for the blizzard.

No building a snowman for us just yet.