Today we finally dug out of the snowstorm that hit the Northeast. Snowstorms are like hills when you are on a bike--the long, steady incline hills are worse than the short up and down ones. As my tenth New England winter I am getting used to it. We have a full complement of quality snow removal tools: kitchen broom (for the steps),an allegedly backsaver shovel, snow pusher (big difference, Ohio folks, here is a snow pusher), snow blower (our beloved, Harold), and a really nice plastic shaker jug (which sounds like a move exotic dancers do) like this one. I also have a "work jacket" I got at Sears in June for $19 and the surprisingly hard to find crappy $8 gloves (Marshalls came through in the clutch).

One thing I do miss is my snow removal buddy. Bianca was a little tornado of snow removal, shoveling and sweeping like a woman possessed. Unfortunately with Peanut on the way, that didn't seem wise, both the heavy lifting and the slip and fall potential, so I did the full snow removal solo--driveway, walkway, two cars, roof rake, dig out for the oil delivery, and salting without the benefit of the Lil' Tornado. She did help pass me new snow implements as needed and had a hot lunch ready when I got in.

Once we dug out we went to the grocery and Bianca checked a second hand store for maternity clothes, which are still, by in large, woefully unfashionable. Bianca has done a great job finding nice looking clothes, but the attendant effort is ten times that of normal clothes shopping. There seems to be a difficulty index for clothes shopping that apply to all people, something like this (on a scale of 1-10, this is logarithmic, like the Richter Scale):

Wedding Dress: 10
Prom Dress: 8
Maternity Clothes: 8
Bathing Suit: 8
Jeans: 7.5
Dressy Clothes: 7
Workout Clothes: 7
Regular Clothes: 5
Jackets: 4.5
All men's clothes: 1

The search continues.

Boy, this was not too terribly difficult to do. We are not sure if we like the template yet, but that too is pretty easy to change.

Bianca and I have spent most of the week between Christmas and New Year doing baby stuff. First, we did a few tours through day care places. All of them seemed perfectly safe for Peanut, but each had their own advantages and disadvantages. We went to Creative Years in Nashua and they had a great facility and really nice staff. Everything was nice and clean. It is just not Mom-accessible because it is more than an hour from Worcester. It would mean that Dad does all of the pick up and drop off (I imagine that I will have a Mr. Mom moment sooner or later: North to Drop Off South to Pick Up moron). We also visited a place in Leominster: Adventure Kids. It was a less formal setting and would be both Mom- and Dad-accessible. The facility is not as nice as Creative Years though. The final place was Kid City which is within walking distance from our house. It is even less formal than Adventure Kids. We may have caught them on an unusual day because we visited on New Year's Eve, but they had some "energetic" kids. We have a few other places to look: Rainbow Daycare in Townsend and the Guild of St. Agnes in Devens. The Guild of St. Agnes is an old service group and they have a unique history (see here).

We also did a small bit of baby shopping. We went to a local chain of baby stuff called Magic Beans (see here). The staff was really great--more knowledgeable than the folks at Babies R Us. They had all sorts of stuff, including the Ferrari of baby strollers, a $1,200 Stokke design. I believe that this model is actually a test and if you buy it a group of highly trained government agents descend on your car in the parking lot where they kidnap you and send you to a prison for stupid rich people (i.e. those that have more money than sense). We ended up not being able to resist the urge and purchased the stroller that we both wanted and Erica strongly recommended: the Phil and Ted Classic. I am sort of surprised at how excited I was at the idea of buying a stroller.

We are snowed in today, not like "can't get to the hospital" snowed in, but really inconvenient snowed in. This is why this post is so long. If I can get permission for the Editor in Chief I will post the hilarious unboxing of the stroller video.

Here is a video taken on Bianca's iPhone of Colby and I being funny.