Momma's blunders

Sometimes it is just hard to communicate with a two year old. OK, ok, most of the time it's hard. One such day in Canada, Ivan and I had been playing in the igloo, then tried sliding without proper equipment, which really didn't work. Ivan kept saying "house, house", so I figured he'd had enough and called it a day. As we were going inside, he kept crying and screaming "house". Finally when I was inside with him and we had already removed the dozen or so pieces of extra clothing for snow play I realized that Ivan was saying "house" as in "snow house". He wanted to play more in the igloo. I finally understood him, but it was too late, we'd already gotten all the ski pants, mitts, hats, boots... off and I was not about to put them back on. It would have melted your heart to watch him trying to gather up all the clothing in his little arms as he cried "snow house, snow house".

The next episode is even worse, way worse. I have a video with his tormented cries in the background, but it only reminds me of how horrid I felt, so you don't get to see it! I had the oh, so brilliant idea of walking the property with Ivan and O'neil. I knew the snow was deep 'cause Brian had been around it earlier in the week, but I figured we could walk in his footprints and besides we had big boots on. Of course we didn't discover until we'd made it way out on the periphery and away from our deceivingly easy entrance that it was totally impossible to walk even 20 yards on our own yet alone carrying Ivan. I told the guys we could roll our way back to the manageable path, so here is the video of Ivan learning to roll. He doesn't really get it down here, but did OK later.



During our failing snow walking navigations, Ivan's mitt fell off a couple of times and he got his hand wet in the snow. We got it back on and once on the path, decided to take some pictures in not so deep areas then go visit the neighbor's horse. On the way there, Ivan starts his screaming, but we can't figure out what is wrong. He screamed if I said we'd go home or if I said we'd go to the horse. He screamed as I jogged down the hill carrying him to the horse and as I jogged him back toward the house. Suddenly as I'm on our way back, a little inner voice says: his hands are cold. I felt like total dirt. We rushed in the house and of course once the heat hit them, he REALLY got to screaming. I'm sure they stung like crazy. Dad was reassuring me "I'm sure they aren't frostbitten, you weren't out that long". Everyone was trying to help, but the only thing that worked was to hold him and rock him until the pain diminished, at which point he fell asleep in my arms. I carefully checked for signs of abnormal skin frantically hoping there were none. I'm glad this was one time dad was right.


One night aunt Marj cajoled all of us to go for a walk. It was a collosal feat to get us all off our butts and into our winter gear, then we were posing for pics and greeting horses, while she and uncle Pete sped down the lane. Something about heart rate or something. They may have been right though since the two girl cousins just complained about it being cold the whole time and kept saying we should get back. Ah well, eating is more fun than walking anyways and now we are all paying for it!