{"id":113092,"date":"2014-01-13T13:00:45","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T18:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/?p=113092"},"modified":"2014-01-13T14:04:47","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T19:04:47","slug":"surviving-the-polar-vortex-with-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/surviving-the-polar-vortex-with-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"Daddyish: MAN VS. CHILD: Surviving Polar Vortex Cabin Fever"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It\u2019s icy, it\u2019s wet, it\u2019s snowy in a lot of places, but above all, it\u2019s cold. Like, painfully cold. Which means going outside is not desirable. Unfortunately, when you have kids, staying inside isn\u2019t necessarily desirable either. BECAUSE THAT\u2019S WHERE THE KIDS ARE. But just because your kids annoy you doesn\u2019t mean you can open the door and let them freeze to death at least, so says my wife. And the authorities. So, peace and quiet be damned, you have to keep them inside. Because if it\u2019s painfully cold for a hardy adult like Yours Truly, it\u2019s dangerously cold for my three-year-old\u2019s delicate, porcelain skin. Which means I\u2019ve been forced to spend most of the Polar Vortex sequestered inside with my son for long stretches of time.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not about to explain hypothermia and frostbite and mortality to my kid, so instead I just have to distract him. And that ain\u2019t easy. Not shockingly, I\u2019ve taken to calling it the Polar BORE-tex\u00e2\u201e\u00a2! (Copyright Dad and Buried).<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a list of activities I\u2019ve been employing to entertain my son and survive the latest cold snap.<\/p>\n

MAN VS. CHILD<\/p>\n

TV <\/strong> Holy shit the amount of TV my kid has watched this winter is INSANE. Don\u2019t judge me; when you can\u2019t go outside you\u2019ve gotta kill some time! Besides, it\u2019s therapeutic to sit back and enjoy a margarita while watching the sun-soaked adventures of \u201dJake and the Neverland Pirates\u201d, and my son is learning TONS about doubloons!<\/p>\n

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Trains <\/strong> I don\u2019t understand the obsession with trains. I don\u2019t know any adult men who are into trains, at least not the kind of trains that one can speak about in mixed company. Or any company. But every single little boy I know worships the fucking things. My son got like 4 new trains sets for Christmas! But it\u2019s fine. They keep him occupied. I think he\u2019d skip his meals to keep pushing those stupid toy locomotives around and that\u2019s fine with me. As long as he stops with the ear-splitting \u201dchoo-choo!!!\u201d<\/p>\n

Drinking Our Own Pee <\/strong> Come on, I\u2019m not crazy. This only happens by accident.( Don\u2019t judge. HE\u2019S STILL FIGURING OUT THE POTTY THING!)<\/p>\n

Building Forts <\/strong> Every kid loves forts. But I\u2019m taking it to another level. The forts I build with my son aren\u2019t that big, but they are dimly lit and they have no exits. I throw the kid in there and I\u2019m able to hop in the shower and surf the net for a good two hours before he crawls his way out. It keeps him occupied, and all that crawling around looking for a way out burns off tons of energy. One time he even fell asleep in there. It\u2019s genius. You can barely even hear his anguished cries from behind all the couch cushions!<\/p>\n

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More Trains <\/strong> IT NEVER ENDS.<\/p>\n

Playing Pretend <\/strong> Once you kid turns two-and-a-half or so, he starts to use his imagination like crazy. It\u2019s hilarious and sometimes creepy to watch my son converse with his stuffed animals, or reenact some of his favorite shows and movies. When you\u2019re snowed in, or iced in, or whatevered-in, odds are you\u2019ll be enlisted into his fantasies. Which is fun, until you\u2019ve been running around carrying him in your arms for three hours so he can pretend to be Superman, and you\u2019re ready to collapse. Most of the time when my son wants to play pretend, I try to pretend that I\u2019m a highway for him to race his cars on, because that way I get to lie down on the floor.<\/p>\n

Dancing <\/strong><\/p>\n

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My son likes dancing as much as I hate it. Which is a LOT. The good news is dancing requires music, and if it\u2019s played loudly enough, I can\u2019t hear my son begging me to go outside. Also, dancing tires him out. It brings me dangerously close to a heart attack, but that\u2019s a small price to pay for a three-hour nap in the middle of the afternoon. I have some DVR to catch up on.<\/p>\n

Home-schooling <\/strong>I suppose it would be a responsible of me to spend some of the hours trapped inside this winter teaching my son his ABCs or 123s or etc. So please, give it a shot. But the closest I\u2019ve come to home-schooling my kid is making him memorize the jive talk from \u201dAirplane!\u201d I barely have the patience for home-playing.<\/p>\n

Playing Pretend \u201dRestaurant\u201d <\/strong> I\u2019m trying to get my son into pretending to run a restaurant so I can be his customer and can just keep ordering beers over and over until one of us passes out. I told you I wasn\u2019t being responsible. If it makes you feel any better, I usually pass out first. Or he does. Whatever makes you feel better.<\/p>\n

Read more from Dad and Buried on his blog at\u00a0www.DadandBuried.com<\/a><\/p>\n

(Image: getty images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Has anyone been on Facebook recently? According to the popular ad-serving, personal-data-farming website, it\u2019s been pretty cold outside recently!…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21350,"featured_media":113101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[421],"tags":[5574,7353,188,5575,4266],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":421,"label":"dads"}],"post_tag":[{"value":5574,"label":"bored kids"},{"value":7353,"label":"gallery"},{"value":188,"label":"playtime"},{"value":5575,"label":"winter"},{"value":4266,"label":"winter weather"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/ngs0_9097.jpg",333,312,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"DadandBuried","author_link":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/author\/dadandburied\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":421,"name":"dads","slug":"dads","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":954,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":3,"count":103,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":421,"category_count":103,"category_description":"","cat_name":"dads","category_nicename":"dads","category_parent":3}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":5574,"name":"bored kids","slug":"bored-kids","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5655,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":4,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":7353,"name":"gallery","slug":"gallery-2","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":7444,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":2500,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":188,"name":"playtime","slug":"playtime","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":188,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":18,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":5575,"name":"winter","slug":"winter","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5656,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":11,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":4266,"name":"winter weather","slug":"winter-weather","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":4332,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":8,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113092"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21350"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}