Right before my second daughter was born, my best friend moved to Arizona, and in the past few years, I’ve had the joy of connecting with a lot of moms in the Southern half of the country. It’s hilarious how we can all live in the same country, but actually live in completely different worlds, especially when it comes to weather. So when we hit actual air temps of -28 lat weekend, what I saw on social media from friends living in different climates had me realizing there are so many things that only Northern moms know. So our team started a little list…
- Parkas are not a cute coat that you wear in your Christmas photos or bust out when it gets “down” to 40 degrees outside because you won’t sweat to death in it that day. They are how you don’t die when the ‘feels like’ temperature is -51 degrees.
- It’s not worth the 15 minutes to dress everyone for a block and a half walk to the bus stop, so every school morning, you happily load three kids in the car just to drive those two blocks with the heat blasting.
- Boots… again, not a cute accessory. Northern moms even wear them when it’s not snowing because, let’s face it, for most of January, it’s actually too cold to snow, and you really do like having all ten toes.
- Actual air temperatures of -28 degrees do not keep you inside your home. Not on a Saturday when you had plans. Dangit, Minnesota, we will not be kept down. We will go to Target and out to lunch because it is SATURDAY and your wind and bitter cold can’t stop us!
- There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. We just dress smarter and let our cars run a few minutes longer to heat up.
- Our kids have up to five pairs of mittens. Each. And the cute soft ones do not cut it, which even the kids know. Give us your North Face, your Patagonia and your biggest Martmots. While we are tough, the kids are tougher and we watch from the window as they play outside for hours in single digit temperatures that would send all of Texas and its cumulative six snow plows into a tizzy.
- You are guaranteed to see people in shorts in January while out and about. Also…50 degrees in March? Tropical heatwave!
- We are annoyed when an hour of snow brings four inches and the highways have yet to be plowed.
- We know all the best winter cocktail recipes.
- Baby started walking yesterday…let’s get that kid in ice skates tomorrow!
- We can go to the grocery store, load up on groceries, and then stop at five different places on the way home and our food will stay cold in the minivan.
- Related, sometimes we use the insulated grocery bags (the ones intended to keep frozen food frozen) to prevent produce from freezing in the car on the way home.
- Our indoor obstacle course game is on point.
- We wear hats indoors too. Or really, we just collect piles of the cutest winter hats (pom-pom hats anyone?!) and you may not see our hair for months. We are tough, but it’s cold inside too and with so many fun winter hats out there…who needs to do their hair? We’ll revisit the idea of a hairstyle of some kind in May.
- We dress our kiddos in unimaginable amounts of layers, knowing it can start out below freezing when they get on the bus and be high 40’s by the time they have recess. And then freezing cold again by the time they get done with after school activities at 5pm. We do more laundry than you could ever imagine.
