First Snow

We got about four inches of lovely fluffy snow on Friday night into Saturday, the first snow of the season! What a perfect first snow -- waking up to it on a weekend rather than having to go to school, enough for sledding but not so much that sleds would get stuck, warm enough to play but not enough to melt the stuff before you get your fun in.

Rose and Joy both adore the snow, but in very different ways.


Rose looks at the snow and makes a plan -- and she's old enough that she can carry out those plans herself when they're on our property! She gets herself all dressed and then goes forth and shovels, makes snow angels, and sleds or snowboards down the gentle incline in our backyard. Alas, we had mistreated the snowboard over the summer, such that it had warped in our garage under the weight of hoses and a bicycle(!) She still managed to make it work for now, though, even when we took a family jaunt to the fairly-steep hill at their elementary school.

Joy, on the other hand, inhabits the snow.


It takes quite a bit of adult interference to get Joy bundled up appropriately -- but once you let her out the door, she's off with a bound. Snow is an amazing stimmy! It's everywhere, and (unlike dirt or woodchips), it can actually be OK to throw it in the air! She blazes trails through it (the above pic is at the school grounds), she rolls in it, she trickles it from her mittened hands, she makes her best attempts to consume it -- if she can get her face into it before a JoyParent can get to her....

At the schoolyard, she was thrilled to go speeding down the long hill on a sled with mama, but then not much interested at all in working on getting back up the hill. I eventually towed her back up in the sled, a long slow process because she kept dragging her mittens in the snow and I kept stopping to request that she get her hands back into the sled. At least she stays in the sled, which wasn't the case as recently as two years ago! And she was happy to announce "Go!" to get me to start pulling again -- over and over and over.

Alas, this week the temperature is going into the deepfreeze. The snow play bouts will be shorter and chillier, I'm thinking. But we'll do our best to enjoy it while it's still got the novelty factor!