Winter Woes......

We've been having a strange winter so far. Actually, has not been much of a winter. Days were its almost sixty degrees out. Which if fine with me!! I can't stand much of the cold. But then suddenly temps will drop and we'll have real winter temps. I dislike the cold. The worst part of this winter so far is all the rain we've gotten. There is no way we can fall into a drought this summer with all this rain we've had so far this winter.

The other things I dislike about winter, is the bulkiness of clothing one must wear. Although its not as bad as it use to be when we lived up north in Massachusetts. When I remember it being to cold and snowy that you HAD to wear a very heavy coat in order to stay warm. And manuvering around inside a car made you feel like the Michelin man.
Having a child in a wheelchair can pose a few things with winter. Baby girl has a chest restraint to help her sit up more in the chair and its often constantly adjusting them to fit with her bulkey winter coat on. As well as adjusting them to fit when she doens't have the bulky coat on. And with constant temps changing back and forth, one day we'll have to wear the coat, another a light jacket. So out of ease, we've come to put her coat on backwards. That way the straps don't have to be constantly adjusted, yet she has her coat on. The only problem with that is her upper back and neck tend to be exposed.
The second thing I dislike is that the wheelchair lift on our van apparently doesn't like winter either. We have the Braun II Vangater, and although its been a great lift. We have discovered that in freezing cold temps, the lift can temporarily freeze up as well. Usually when we are in the process of lifting baby girl and her chair up and into the van. We'll drop the lift wheel her onto it and bring the lift up. After we wheel her in, and bring the lift back in suddenly it will freeze midway through coming up. So we can't even close the side doors!! ARG! Our best solution so far for this is to let the van run for almost a half hour with the heaters on full blast to warm the lift up. Apparently putting the lift down cold in the cold weather causes something in it to freeze and stick. And its those moments I am thankful, THANKFUL we never went with one of those undercarriage type lifts. Although they do save space on the inside compartment of the van, one has to worry about speed bumps and that as its lower to the ground. And someone who had one of those lifts once told me that in winter it would also always freeze as ice and snow would get into it.