You'd Have Thought We Were Living on the Ice Pack

After a really warm fall (which this Texan appreciates immensely) the cool/cold weather showed up yesterday.  Ayi kept telling me, "Colorado leng! Colorado leng!" (Colorado is cold.) 

Now had Ayi grown up in Hong Kong, Shanghai, or even Houston, I'd understand that comment.  But she's from Beijing.  And I'm pretty confident Beijing hasn't been featured on Travel Channel's tropical paradise list lately.  Sure Beijing doesn't get a lot of snow, but that's because it has a desert climate, not because it's warm in the winter.  So how cold is Beijing?  Let's just say when we moved into our house the first week of February, the water in the toilet was frozen. Um-hum. 

But even better than her being from Beijing, she actually spent about 25 years in Harbin, China.

Never heard of Harbin?

Yes you have.

You know all the pictures you see all over the Internet of snow and ice carvings?  Yeah, those are done in Harbin.  Harbin, China: 300 miles from the Russian border and home of the International Snow and Ice Festival.

We all visited in 2005, and I can honestly say I've never been so cold in my life.  Jason and I paid about $10 a piece for a horrible cup of hot chocolate just to get inside a building to warm up.  (And at that point we'd have paid $100 a cup.)  It was so cold that my hand would ache the few seconds I had a glove off to try and take a picture. And all the while, she'd walk around wearing a jacket and no gloves.

(I actually have better pictures, but that would require search and scanning, and this one was conveniently on Facebook. And don't judge my boots. Ayi told me to buy them when we got to Harbin. They cost $5 and my feet were never cold. I switched to my expensive Timberlands one day and I thought my toes were going to fall off.)

So this morning when she came to me and said, "Outside. Very, Very, Very, Very Cold." I knew we were having some pretty serious weather if:

A. She was speaking to me in English. (She wanted to make 100% sure I knew exactly what she was saying.)

and

B. She was cold!

I layered and bundled JR the best I could, and searched frantically for a pair of gloves that matched.  I sent them out the door to the bus stop and went to check the temperature, fully expecting it to be in the negatives.

Temperature at 7:10 AM?

27

Now sure 27 is cold to a Texan, but the way she was carrying on I was fully expecting to see 7, or even 17.

And then I realized that, of course, she hadn't been cold. 

But she didn't want her baby, JR, cold.

His Chinese grandmother is still convinced I have no idea how to raise him. I honestly think she thought if she hadn't poured on the dramatics I'd have sent him out in shorts!