When I picked the kids up from preschool the other day, there was a little note in all of the family mailboxes regarding snowpants. It was surprisingly strongly-worded for a note about clothing from our friendly little school. In a nutshell, they try to take the kids to play outside every day, so long as it isn’t bitter cold (think teens or colder) or pouring rain. The note said that, if the kids were not properly attired to play outside in winter weather, we should expect a call to come pick them up early. Dang. Not messing around, little Montessori!
We’ve gotten snowpants and boots in previous years, generally of the inexpensive Target or Old Navy variety, but have gotten pretty minimal use out of them. I don’t mind playing in the snow, but it seemed that it took longer to put all of the gear on than it did for them to decide they didn’t actually want to be outside, anyways.
This looks like it might be the year we change our minds.
We arrived in Chicago on Monday morning for our annual holiday visit extravaganza, and on the ground was the first snow my kids had seen this year (it finally started snowing in Boston a few hours after we left). Driving to my mom’s house from the airport, Daniel exclaimed “oh my! Look! More snow!” about every quarter-mile. It snowed a bit more that night, and by Tuesday morning, the kids were dying to try on their new snowpants and boots (which we had to splurge on at LL Bean – Target and Old Navy were both sold out of 3T, barely halfway through December!).
Oh my lord was it a hit. They happily stomped through the (not at all deep) snow in their heavy new boots. They plopped down on their bellies, and flipped over on their backs to make their first snow angels. They were disappointed that it wasn’t good snowman-making snow.
And it didn’t end there. After 15 minutes of playing in my mom’s little yard, we walked the block and a half over to the snow-covered playground (oh, to live that close to a playground!) and they had at least as much fun playing on it as they do in the middle of the summer.
The Farmer’s Almanac isn’t predicting a very snowy year for New England (just cold, sadly), but I get the feeling we’ll be out in it every time the white stuff comes down.
