Sled Envy

This winter and last winter have had some pretty serious snowfall here. My Alaskan and Canadian readers may not be much impressed, but for us it set records, for the winter in 2007-2008 and for the month of December in 2008.

Getting Rose to and from school was a particular challenge last winter. Not that Rose doesn't cope with snow fairly well, but we always had Joy along too. Too big to carry, strollers are useless in the snow, had behavioral issues in early 2008 and didn't always care to slog along snowy sidewalks.

Other families were using sleds, especially for younger sibs. But that didn't work for us either, and I was envious. Joy wouldn't stay on a sled. Even on a downhill run, she'd ditch halfway through the ride. Trying to pull along a snowy road? Forget about it.

But this winter, I posted in December about our amazing family sledding outing. "Joy sticks to the sled like a little burr!" I wrote. So I decided to try the sled as a transportation device to get rose to school yesterday morning.

It worked like a charm. I was able to tow both girls on the sled about 2/3 of the way before we hit street & sidewalk that was too dry for sled (about a 10 minute endeavor). Joy kept on the sled, and kept on her mittens and boots no problem. Then I held her hand and we all walked the last third together. The way back was similar. Walked well, Joy alone on the sled this time, stayed on the sled and never lost so much as a mitten. She did great. Rose, on the other hand, complained bitterly about the cold once she had to get out of the sled and start walking, and told me she was so cold, she was gonna die. And it was all my fault because I didn't lay out her scarf for her (as if she had asked? and anyway, she had a hat and a hood). Can you say, "pre-teen"? At the age of almost seven, yikes!!

Guess I can say goodbye to the sled envy, at least unless/until we have any major switch-flipping in that area!

Speaking of switch-flipping, I'm now ready to declare that Joy did not have a Christmas regression this year, unlike the past two holiday seasons. If the switches go haywire tomorrow, we'd call it a New Year regression. But we made it through the holidays. Woohoo!