It went about as bad as it could go.  Twenty degrees before the breeze coming off the lake, and all my two tots want to do is go out in play in it.  Half-way through January and it finally snowed enough to cover the grass.  Here we go.

Brief, but happy revelry in the snow...

The morning the ‘winter storm’ made its tracks through Northern Ohio, my daughter woke up at her normal crack of before dawn time.  I heard her doorknob creek, followed by a groggy “Mom…can you help me?  I very have to pee very badly.”  Both half asleep, I peek through the bathroom window to see if all the snow hype really materialized this time.  Oh, did it ever.

“MOM!!!!  IT’S CHRISTMAS OUTSIDE!!!”

Luck for Daddy, I had a doctor’s appointment…which left him to do the bundling up…and bundling up…and bundling up…to play outside for 5 minutes before it’s time to go in for hot chocolate.  Brianne did get a snow angel in, though, and Daddy now has a better appreciation for those sledding and snow-man-building pictures.

Morning after, when the blowing and drifting snow let up a little bit, it was a song full of “SANTA! SANTA!” (my one-year old’s association with snow…) and “CAN WE GO PLAY NOW? CAN WE PLAY IN THE SNOW?” at the breakfast table.  Difficult as it may be to bundle one jumping toddler and another running around with her scarf… eventually neither child could move very fast on account of all the bundling, and ‘play in the snow’ time it was.

I sent them out the door into the snow, and two steps in little Lauren is on her but crying in frustration.  Too many clothes on to get up herself, she is forced to wait for help from a preoccupied big sister or Mommy to put her boots on and get outside to pull her up to her feet.  “Oh, noooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!”  Little did she realize, this was not the biggest problem she’d have with the snow.

Finally on sleds gallivanting through a yard of snow, we head down our unplowed street to check out the lake.  There were the familiar shrieks of laughter.  All it takes is being pulled on a sled through the snow by Mom.  Ok, I run and make an idiot of myself to get them to laugh.  Guilty.

At the end of the street, they both talk to the ducks wading in the cold water…my oldest concerned if they are warm enough.  My youngest might have been, too…I just can’t always understand what she’s saying.  But they both wave good-bye and back down the street we go.  I think we’ve been outside about 10 minutes at this point, and it’s all I can do to keep them entertained for fear of ‘unbundling’ already.  So, I have a great idea.  Someone plowed the road the day before and left a pile of snow…or a sledding hill…whatever.

“1…2…3…GO, MOMMY!”

And flying over the snow pile they go, Brianne crashing to the side on her sled and Lo- oh, no -Lo…face down, still attached to her sled, in the snow. Oops.  Bad idea.  Flipped right side up, she’s got a frozen face full of snow, looking at me like I’ve just abandoned her in an empty warehouse somewhere.  “Oh no!  Oh, no! OH, NO!!!!” She cries in hysteria.  Wipe the snow off.  Pull the scarf up over her face.  Pull the sleds back home.  Come in side.  Unbundle.

The whole ordeal?  20 minutes, tops.  I’m sweating profusely…they are dancing around in the snow chunks that have fallen off of their clothes demanding hot chocolate.  Madness.

Is it summer, yet?

Happy Bundling.

Megs