This morning, it finally snowed. In Utah, this really should not be such an abnormal event, but when you have just been through the driest December on record, you start to get really, really excited about the white stuff again. Especially if you are Thing 2.
You see, several weeks ago (before the great December drought of 2011), Thing 2 saw a little boy in our neighborhood out shoveling snow with a perfect Thing 2-sized shovel. Immediately, Thing 2 began to vocalize his extreme need for such a beautiful snow-removal device. And because Thing 2 has some magical powers, lo and behold, we found that exact shovel at the local grocery store a few days later. The rejoicing was extreme.
And then, Thing 2 began the snow watch. As the days passed, he talked and talked about how he just wanted to shovel some snow and whether or not there would be snow coming soon. Days turned into weeks. We passed a dismal looking, completely not white, yet still fun Christmas (in which Thing 2 acquired his other heart’s desire, a drum set, but I shall have to post about that later because right now I’m talking about snow and such). The Christmas break, during which even Mr. Knightley was home, was altogether too sunny by far and woefully lacking in the sledding and snow forting Thing 1 and Thing 2 had planned. New Year’s Day was (dare I say it?) disgustingly warm. Thing 2 still spoke of the snow shovel from time to time, but I think that by this point, snow seemed to him like a vaguely remembered dream from long ago.
Finally, this morning, as I stumbled groggily into the bathroom, I noticed that the sky outside our bathroom window was white instead of the smoggy blue it had been for ages. Yes!!!! The day had come! As soon as Thing 2’s melodic yell of “Mom! Come get me!” came over the monitor, I hurried into his bedroom and told him to look outside. For some reason, he ran into my bedroom to look out the window, but this was fortuitous because then Mr. Knightley got to hear what came next, too.
As Thing 2 pulled aside the curtain, he yelled gleefully, “IT’S CHRISTMAS!!!” (Now, since we had just passed Christmas, I’m not quite sure what he meant with this statement. Perhaps he really thought it was Christmas again because Bing Crosby says it’s supposed to be white and now it was white? Or perhaps that the snow was the present he had been wanting for ages? Or maybe that it was just going to be a great day, like Christmas?)
We no sooner had started to laugh about the Christmas comment, than the inevitable question came with loads of intensity behind it: “Can I go shovel the driveway now?”
As a parent, I often think about how my parenting will affect my children for good or ill. I make many mistakes, but I love my children with my whole heart and hope that my parenting successes will far outweigh my parenting failures. But in the area of snow shoveling, I have succeeded far past even my wildest dreams. You see, somehow, I have convinced my children that shoveling snow is a great treat! I’m not quite sure how I did this. (I suppose it is possible, although I don’t really want to concede the point, that maybe Thing 1 and 2 just really like to shovel of their own accord.) In any case, let me put this out there into the universe: MAY IT EVER REMAIN SO!!!
And so, here in Utah, some people have snow blowers. Some people go out and push the stuff around themselves. But as for myself, I have these guys:
And they’re happy about it, too.
Snow mission accomplished!
No comments:
Post a Comment