North Dakota Winter& Laura's Ears

We had a lot of snow that year the kids and I stayed in Minot, North Dakota. It was very very cold. I had to have a tank heater installed on my car and had to plug it in whenever I was not using it, or else it would freeze up. I had an extention cord stuck out our front bedroom window to plug it in to. By pulling the car up far enough to plug in the car, left a lot more driveway to shovel. This was a very strenuous job--that snow is heavy. Danny came outside with me a few times to help me shovel. He had a small shovel to use and he worked just as hard as I did. It was so cute to watch him because at least half of the snow he shoveled fell back where it had been when he went to dump it out. My brother in laws (two of them) came over a couple of times but mostly I was on my own with it. I kept some of it cleared by driving back and forth over it when I was coming and going.

Danny went to Kindergarten every afternoon Monday thru Friday. Laura and I would drive him down there (it was seven or eight blocks). Then we'd go back home and she would take a little nap and I just had some nice quiet time. Then we would drive back down and pick him up from school. I learned to drive fairly well in the snow and made it around town alright. There were only a few days that I wouldn't go out and drive in it because I thought the roads were too bad.

We had quite a time that year with Laura's ears. She would get ear infections so bad that pressure would build up behind her eardrum and it would pop. This is extemely painful. Every time she got a cold it would go to her ears. Doctors started just putting her on an antibiotic whenever she got the cold, to ward it off before it got so bad. Many of nights I sat and rocked her while she cried in pain from her ears. I would cry some too because I couldn't do anything to help her--it just took time for the medicine to start working. In months to come, we had to put her in the hospital to have tubes put in her ears. This was a fairly new procedure at the time, and the doctor had to do some talking before I would put my baby girl in the hospital to have this operation done. I'm glad they talked me in to it because she was so much better after that.