So, here's a fun fact about my pregnancies: I get really winded. Easily. You would think this would only happen near the end of the pregnancy when there's not a lot of room for the lungs to inflate, but no. It's one of the early signs of pregnancy, certainly for me, and for other women as well. It has something to do with increased progesterone, and your heart beat already being faster during pregnancy so any increase is more acutely felt, and there's something about increased blood volume and I don't know what-all. All I know is that along with the nausea, it's one of the first signs for me that I'm expecting: if carrying a laundry basket up our two flights of stairs leaves me breathless, I'm probably "gasping for two."

With this in mind, I'm not sure what I was thinking when I decided to shovel our driveway with Hugh this morning. There was only a bit of snow on the ground, so it seemed like it would be a piece of cake. Hugh had been asking repeatedly if we had any "rakes;" it took me a while before I figured out he meant "shovels" and that he wanted to "help" us shovel the driveway. My dad is coming tonight for an overnight, and it seemed like a nice, host-y thing to do to have a relatively snow-free driveway. So after dropping Neva off at school this morning, Hugh and I tackled the driveway.

I had forgotten that the first day/night it snowed, it was sort of freezing-snow-pellet-granule things. This created a very solid layer several centimetres thick, on top of which was the deceptively light snow which had fallen last night. I quickly realized that before I could achieve any removal of snow from the driveway, I would first need to break the snow/ice/granule thingys up. I got out our spade and began.

Hugh, meanwhile, was pushing his own plastic shovel around, periodically using our larger shovels, commenting as he passed me, "'Scuse me, Mommy. There's a lot of work to do, eh?" During the frequent intervals when I would lean on my spade, head on my hands and gasping for breath, he would say, "Mommy, what you doing?" "Resting," I would say. "It's a lot of work, Mommy," he would say, trudging around, taking snow from the lawn and putting it back on the driveway. You have no idea, little Dude, I thought.

Headway was being made; I was breaking the snow up and then using our big shovel to then move it over to the sides of the driveway, and although I was getting tired, I am all about following through on a commitment, so I was determined to finish shoveling this damn driveway. (Partway through I had memories of my battles with the dandelions. At least then I wasn't pregnant, nauseous and breathless. Though both times I was sweaty.)

I only had a little patch of driveway left to go when I started dry heaving. I knew at that moment that I didn't have much left in me (literally) but I just couldn't leave that tiny bit un-shoveled. By this point my hat and scarf had come off, my nose was running and my hair was flying all over the place (I'll leave you to imagine how the interaction between hair in face and runny nose went). The Dude was very encouraging: "Good job, Mommy!" and "You a strong Mommy!" and I got the bulk of the snow off that driveway. I'm sure it's not up to whatever military code is implicit in our neighbourhood, but it's done. Phew.

Now that the snow and the cold and the windchill have arrived, the kids are going to school/daycare layered right up. (Neva, by her own choice, wore pants, a skirt, and a jumper today, to be topped off by her snowpants.) Today, when I went to pick Hugh up, the toddlers were all playing outside and I had one of these moments where I had to identify Hugh by what his winter clothes look like, and not by his actual facial features.

Black and red coat and black snowpants? Only about 3-4 kids were wearing that combo.

Blue and grey tuque and mitts? That narrowed it down a bit...

The clincher was his orange scarf. Phew! Finally I found my son.

Of course, once I got to him, he said, "Mommy, I play some more?" Apparently having snow on the ground is no impediment to pushing a truck around the play area. Since he was happy, I went in to get Neva first, then retrieved him. I think he's enjoying the snow, and clearly he was warm enough.

I am feeling very satisfied today. Together. Calm. Relaxed.

Why?

Since noon today, I have been all caught up on the laundry.

There is one cloth and a pair of socks in our collective laundry hampers. That's it. Everything else is clean, folded, and put away, or currently being worn. That means for one more hour, until the kids disrobe for bathtime and start refilling the laundry baskets, there is not one item of laundry worth doing in our house.

I'm just going to enjoy the rest of this hour.

As I mentioned, we’ve been listening to the Backyardigans CD quite a bit lately. It’s on basically all the time in the car (when the kids are in it, at least) and they do seem to love it. I must admit, I enjoy it as well. My favourite tracks:

* Disco-Themed “Shake Your Body”
* Burlesque-Style “What’s So Scary ‘Bout That”
* Jazzy “Ballad of the Brave Pink Knight”

I’ll often wake up singing one of those tracks, or another one, and be humming a completely different one all day at work. We also watched a downloaded copy of “The Little Mermaid” recently, and those songs have become stuck in my head as well. So I’m stuck with all of these kids’-song earworms. Yeesh.

In other news: currently, Neva is nursing a Ring-Pop which she retrieved as her “treat” tonight from her Hallowe’en bag (yes, we still have Hallowe’en candy hanging around). The Dude is asking her if she’s done it yet, because I told him that we could play Dance Dance Revolution after she was done her Ring-Pop. I also told her she could eat it downstairs if she sat down the whole time she was consuming it (this is a major variation of the usual rules, which are that one must eat at the table). Anyway, the Dude is anxious to play Dance Dance Revolution (which at least is more active than just watching TV) so he’s asking her every few minutes, “Neva, can I have some of your lollipop?” I think she knows that if she lets him anywhere near her lollipop, he will just crunch it all up instead of licking it every five minutes as she is doing, so she says "no" to him and takes another lick, and the way things are going, there will be no dancing tonight. Ah, well. There’s always tomorrow. At least the DDR songs haven’t become a part of my earworm repertoire... yet.