Our First Snow

Last year we hardly had a winter to speak of. A couple of weekends before Christmas, we were walking about in downtown Pittsburgh admiring the Christmas lights with nothing more than long sleeve shirts on. We never even bought Emry a coat. I just put her in fuzzy pajamas and a hoodie the time I took her out in the one good snow we had (which was all of a couple of inches). After all, she wasn’t crawling let alone walking. She just sat on the towel I put down and let me take a few pictures of her first snow, even though she wasn’t impressed. In fact, she didn’t seem to like snow at all.

First snow last winter – happy to be out, but mostly unimpressed.

Fast forward a year to a really good three-inch snow this week and that seems to have changed. When I showed her the snow falling outside our windows, she was mesmerized. She just stood there watching it. Then she would point in wonder and declare, “Snow!” We didn’t have time to investigate the wonder of snow that day, but we put on our layers the next day to explore: boots, snowpants, coat, mittens. It’s a collection of mismatched whatevers. The snowpants belonged to one of my sisters and are too long and extremely loose at the top. But they can be rolled up in the legs and the 6 to 9 month size coat fits perfectly to hide the overreaching straps. The mittens are a little large, too, but she doesn’t seem to mind them. Of course, put all that on and it’s a little hard to move. Snowball fights are certainly a thing of the future – we can barely walk!

First snow this winter – yea, we love being outside!

Nor were we much interested in walking at first. I helped her outside and there she stood on the concrete slab, staring at the snow as if it would jump up and bite her. Even when I stomped around in it, she didn’t dare move. Finally, I picked her up and stood her up in the midst of it. For a moment, she still didn’t move. I even wondered if the tears would come next. But she must have decided that it wasn’t going to hurt her for off she went, trudging away down to the sidewalk where we walked up the road and admired the neighbor’s snowman. As it was quite cold, we didn’t stay out and explore the wonders of snow for very long, but she was quite happy with her first introduction, jabbering on as I undressed her of how she had been “ ‘side snow!” (interpretation: outside in the snow).

Hopefully we have many more opportunities to enjoy snow this season. I’m hoping (as I do every winter) for piles of it. And even though it’s a pain to pull on so many layers, it is worth it. Maybe we’ll even build a snowman!