Let It Snow!

It's been a mild, mild kick-off to the winter season in Wisconsin so far.  We didn't harvest our last Swiss chard until Thanksgiving, and we're still getting bits of thyme and sage.  JoyMama has enjoyed bike-commuting to work into December, and JoyDad has appreciated the reprieve from snow-removal.

Rose, however, was pining for snow, making wistful observations about the chances of a white Christmas.

Sometimes, though, when you have no snow, you make your own!

This photo is from Saturday, a clear, relatively-mild day for December.  That white stuff that Joy is gleefully kicking looks for all the world like snow, but look a little closer...

That's not snow, it's cattail fluff!  Turns out that the brown part of the cattail is actually made up of densely-packed seeds, each attached to a bit of fluff to carry it away on the wind.  When you unpack a dried cattail, it explodes into more "snow" than you ever thought possible!  (Even up close, it looks a little like frost-tracings, doesn't it?)

Fortunately, at least to the girls' minds, we had no need to turn to the cattails on Sunday:

Above is the scene in our garden, glorious sticky mantle-of-white all over the fence and the stacked tomato-cages.

And there goes Joy, ready to revel!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Snow Sculpture

Two photos.

Before (as last night's blizzard was just starting to gain steam):

After (the blizzard had blown and snowed and sculpted all night):

The Almighty has a pretty impressive touch with this snow-scuplture stuff.

Can't Drive A Sled

Wherein the women of the JoyFamily prove that not a one of us can drive a sled...



This was from our sledding trip during our lovely visit from Grandma Joy and GrandpaJ, who both sledded in a straighter line than the younger generations managed.

Three cheers for our new Flip video cam, and for JoyDad the intrepid videographer!

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!

Snow Day

Eighteen inches of snow, ladies and gentlemen!

The schools closed down. The university closed down. State government closed down. Buses stopped running.

It's a thing of shivery beauty.

Joy approves.

She started out at the edge of the sidewalk where the snow was thin...


But soon began to blaze a wobbly trail for herself, all through the front yard.


When she had thoroughly explored the front yard, she headed around the corner:


After visiting our neighbor-granny at her kitchen door, Joy trailed along our backyard fence (look at that heavy-work!):



Finding that she couldn't get into our backyard because the fence was snowed shut, Joy plowed through neighbor-granny's backyard to her deck. Finding the deck-steps to be a solid hill of snow, Joy attempted one step... and then turned to me and ASKED FOR HELP!! (OK, so she used the "more" sign. It was still a huge, novel help request!)

So I boosted her up the steps, we went out the driveway and down the street...

and continued onward in our winter wonderland.



P.S. Rose is out sledding right now at a neighbor's. We'd left Joy at home to take an early-afternoon rest... but the neighbor's son was asking to play with her after his nap! So we'll be back out into the snow soon.

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!

Of Elephants and Snow

So JoyDad and I were sitting at the dining table. Joy was watching one of her Baby Crack Einstein videos, the Baby Noah one where they march out a whole bunch of animals two by two.

"Elephant," said the DVD.

"EH-uh-fuh," came the echo, with totally precise timing and inflection.

I happened to be watching Joy at the moment, actually saw her lips move. JoyDad whipped around, what was Rose doing imitating Baby Einstein?

Looky there, we just had an elephant Elvis Sighting! Never heard her do that one before, who knows when we'll hear it next!

[Aside: had a really weird Google search hit on this blog yesterday. The search terms were "does baby einstein cause seizures". Heh. Wonder how that rumor got started.]

What happened later that morning had little to do with Elvis, and much to do with milestones.

As neighbors to Mama Mara, we too had a snow day yesterday. It was beautiful.


And JoyDad got to give his new snowblower a workout...

And today we all went out sledding!

Neither Joy nor Rose much wanted to go sledding last year. Rose was timid, and Joy wouldn't stay in the sled, either for a pull-ride or to go down the hill.

This year, Rose belly-flops without a second thought, and Joy sticks to the sled like a little burr! I sent Joy out into the backyard with a therapist and a sled the other day, and the therapist reported that Joy kept climbing into the sled to be pulled around. "Did she ditch out the side a lot?" I asked. "No, she held on with her hands really well," came the report.

Well, now I've seen it myself.


JoyDad was able to give her a ride all the way from the parking lot to the hill. I was able to tow her UP the hill after a ride. Eventually we got brave and sent her down the hill on her own (I went first on a separate sled to be at the bottom to catch her.)

You should have seen her face on the first run! Sheer delight.

I don't have Redheadmomma's chops at sledding photos but here's a shot that sets the scene:


Joy is the sledder, JoyDad is the dark manly silhouette at the top against the gray clouds, Rose is at the right with a red sled.

Happy winter, everybody!