Knowing that Link would be born as winter approached, and that I would soon after yearn for excercise, I anticipated somehow having to carry both boys simultaneously through the forest on perhaps sinking a bit too deeply snowshoes. Imagine my delight when Meo actually enjoyed using the snowshoes my parents got him for his birthday. When I first put them on him, I thought he would have fun in the yard for a little while, get frustrated and need a break for a few days before we tried again. I didn't think he would truly start using them for a year or more. But he loves them. Even when he is exhausted from walking deep into the forest, he will want to keep going because he loves to snowshoe so much. It makes me so happy.
So here are some glimpses of the snowshoe adventures we've had with one month old Link.
December 18th: The biggest challenge of snowshoeing by myself with the two boys is not the actual walk itself. It's getting them both ready. Inevitably one or both of them cries. Poor Link is usually so tired after breakfast that he cries while I try to juggle them both in the most efficient way possible and ends up falling asleep in his snowsuit before we even start. I am getting faster, though I still regularly dread this tedious process.
 |
| Ready to go |
This was Meo's very first snowshoe in the woods (before that he had just tried once in our back yard).
 |
| Link and I |
Both boys were so tired after our long walk, that Meo managed to fall asleep on the chair while I made our lunch. That has NEVER happened before.
December 21st: First snowshoe with Daddy
December 30th: Mema's very first snowshoe. My mom borrowed Robbie's snowshoes and headed out with us after a big snowstorm. The branches were so heavy with wet, sticky snow that they sank all the way down to the ground and wove across the trail like unforgiving spiderwebs. I often needed to make new trails because the branches were simply too thick to go our usual way. My mom enjoyed her first snowshoe experience and I am excited to have her come out with us again. I wish I got more photos of the afternoon, but my phone stopped working in the cold.
January 1st: Our New Years Day snowshoe as a family. It was cold but breathtakingly beautiful. The trees still were covered in sparkling white that contrasted brilliantly with the rich blue of the sky. Some of our neighbors also took advantage of the perfect day as we saw one family out on their snowmobile trailing their kids in a sled with their happy pups trotting with over-sized sticks behind them. Then we saw another family on snowshoes coming down from a big hill commenting on how gorgeous the view is today. I love our neighborhood.
January 12th: After a long stretch of days that were simply too cold for me to go out with the boys (we are talking -15/-25 with windchill temperatures here), and then Meo catching a bad case of croup, we finally made it back out. Meo still wasn't feeling that great, but he was desprate to go outside (putting his boots on by the doors saying he wanted to go snowshoe in the woods), that we bundled him up and carried him.
Eventually, Meo wanted to get out of the carrier quite badly. So we snowshoed back to a tightly packed trail where he could walk since we didn't have his snowshoes, thinking he would take a few steps then want to be carried again. We were quite wrong and he ended up walking all the way home, becoming quite exhausted. We probably should have made him go back in the carrier, but he was just so happy to be outside walking in the woods again.
 |
| The very tall tree that I am convinced must be the home of a wise old owl |
No comments:
Post a Comment