[blparent] Sarah in the Snow

[Jo Elizabeth Pinto]

Okay, maybe I'm a little sappy, but Sarah and I had another "Wow moment" yesterday.  It snowed for the first time of the season.  At two and a half, Sarah is too young to remember snow from last winter.  She loves going outside more than anything, and to begin with, I bundled her up and took her out to show her that it was too cold to take a walk.  Surely one breath of the icy wind would convince her that we should stay home and maybe watch a movie or play with her dolls.

Wrong!  The snow captivated her instantly.  She loved the way it crunched on the grass under her shoes.  She loved how it felt on her hands and how it melted away into nothing when she touched the branches of the butterfly bush in our yard.  Of course, she had to taste it--just the way we all did when we were too young to worry about air pollution and lawn fertilizer and who knows what else the white stuff may have come up against on its way down--and she pronounced it yummy.  She wanted to stay out even when I knew her hands and feet were freezing cold.

While I had been thinking about slow traffic and how late Gerald would be, and whether it was time to buy rock salt for the steps because the Homeowners' Association never got around to fixing the drippy spot on the edge of the roof from last winter, Sarah was taking in the snow as if it were pure magic.  So I'll say it again, especially to the newer moms like me.  It's easy to get caught up worrying about nutrition and proper stimulation and which brand of diapers to use, but don't miss the "wow moments" along the way.  If Sarah wants to stop and talk to all the fire hydrants in the neighborhood because she thinks they're farmers in matching hats, or fill my pockets with rocks and pine cones because they're babies who need to be taken home, or stand out in the snow till we both have wet feet and numb noses, that's fine, because it makes me remember when I believed in magic and thought anybody who didn't was just plain crazy.

Jo Elizabeth