Snow day

The moment I have been dreading, and the children anticipating, has finally arrived: Our first real snow. School was cancelled for the children on Friday, as ice and snow blanketed the city. The kids awoke to the beautiful, shimmering display of their first winter storm. Their excitement was boundless. They jumped, squealed, and tried to figure out how to dress for their first foray into the world of snowballs, snowmen, and anything else their imagination could create. It took us hours to get them out the door.

Getting three children dressed in long underwear, pants, shirts, socks, sweaters, coats, snow pants, mittens, and hats, is an art I have yet to master. By the time I'd get one kid bundled up, the other would be peeling off his layers.

"It's hot in here!"

So, I'd get the little sister bundled, and return to help the big brother with his mittens and hat. Impatiently, little sister would begin undressing. After a couple of hours of going back and forth between the two older children, I finally got them dressed. The baby realized what was happening, ran to the closet, and tugged on her jacket.

"Coat!" She insisted, using one of her new words. So I began to bundle her up. The older two impatiently began to peel off their layers again, so I sent them out alone, while I wrestled the baby into her parka, one size too big.

My husband reluctantly pulled himself away from his work, put on his coat and hat, and got ready to take the baby out to play with her siblings. The poor thing was so bundled up, she couldn't walk. Nor could she get herself back up once she toppled over, painlessly padded in several layers of warm fluff. He peered out the window to check on the kids.

"I see I have to explain to them about yellow snow." He smiled.

I looked out the window to see my deliriously happy children building some sort of yellow and white snow structure on the sidewalk below. Their giggles and laughter audible from our warm apartment above.

"They are having a blast out there!" I observed. Sheer, boundless joy was, in fact, what I was observing in the swirling whiteness below. My daughter stretched herself out on the crunchy surface, while my son, looking surprisingly unmenacing in his balaclava, mashed, squished, and smooshed snow into bigger and bigger clumps of snow lumps. He wasn't exactly making a snowman, and they weren't snow balls, either. Later I asked him what he was building.

"A snow mountain!" He grinned from ear-to-ear. Ah. Of course. Presumably for skiing or sledding? "And digging tunnels!"

They played out there for hours. My husband raced to get his resumes out for summer jobs, and I tucked the baby away in her crib for a nap. The next couple of hours were spent preparing the Shabbat meal, since our dinner plans also had to be cancelled. Are you sure we won't be able to get the stroller through this stuff? I asked my wise-in-the-ways-of-winter husband. "I'm sure."
I was bummed about having to cook dinner, but one thought sustained me: At least the kids are tiring themselves out. They'll sleep well tonight.

We finally lured the kids back indoors with cups of hot chocolate, and sat down to dinner. When we were done, we stepped over an obstacle course of hats, boots, snow pants, and toys - hours after we had straightened up - and we got the kids dressed in warm pajamas. With the kids cozy in their beds, and the baby in her crib, my husband and I sat down to relax.

Were this a horror movie, the creepy music would have tipped us off to our impending doom; but nothing, musical or otherwise, could prepare us for the nightmare to which we were about to awake.

Collapsed on the couch too tired to face the dishes piled up in the sink, we heard a door creak open. Expecting to find the ballerina, or the big brother, we glanced over at the door, annoyed. But it wasn't one of the older sibling emerging from the room. The triumphant grin of our 20 month-old toddler peaked out, just seconds before the door swung open and the gleeful baby tore through the house giggling, or was it cackling? She cooed and gurgled something that sounded faintly like,

"I'm FREEEEEEEE!!!!!!!"

My husband and I looked at each other with our mouths gaping. Life as we knew it was over. The carefree, halcyon days of taking our unruly, wild, bent-on-destruction angel, and depositing her in her crib where she might howl, but could hardly do any damage, were over. Nap time, bed time, and time outs were no longer going to be a simple process. Gone where the days were I could simply say,

I love you dear, but it's time to go to bed!

No! I sobbed to my husband as he tore after the maniacal midget. The baby figured out how to climb out of her crib, and there was no turning the clock back.

We spent two hours tag-teaming her back to bed. We tried locking her in the room, but she howled and howled and kept her brother and sister up. My husband tried sleeping with her on her little mattress on the floor, but she wiggled away. He tried putting her in bed with her big sister, but she just wanted to play. I tried bringing her in my bed to sleep, but she climbed and bounced all over me. Finally, exhausted and determined, I carried her back into her room, tucked her snuggly into the little mattress on the floor, and sang her songs, while caressing her glowing face. By the sixth song, she began to yawn and stare glassy-eyed into space. By the eighth song, her eyelids grew heavy. By the tenth song, I had clinched the deal.

Dragging myself back into my room, I collapsed in bed.

I'm doomed, utterly doomed.

This morning we awoke to the gleeful chirping of a small bird reintroduced into the wild. The baby pushed the bedroom door open and toddled up to my bed. Her face shone with a sense of joy and accomplishment. She threw her arms up at me and said, "Huggy!"

I scooped her up into my arms and held her close. She held me tight in her small arms. One more milestone passed. My baby isn't a baby anymore, but a growing, independent child. She won't indulge me with long, delicious hugs and cuddles for too much longer. Her little, wobbly legs are too busy taking her wherever she wants to go: her sister's top bunk, her brother's six foot loft bed, the top of the couch. Especially at bedtime. She's waited and worked for this moment, as anticipated as the first snow.