Let It Snow

It's a sincere joy to present (at last!) Sania's first encounter with that bafflingly joyful precipitation, snow.

The young lady spent only a few minutes enjoying the white stuff on Sunday when the National Capitol Region got its first dusting of the winter. Of course, Monday, we stayed at home all day while Reid's school was closed because the county schools were closed, because someone, somewhere, might have snow on their tires.

As you can see below, Reid spent a while out in the snow, dragging around one parent and then the next, undertaking the difficult work of knocking the snow off all the horizontal surfaces on which it had stopped to collect. (This didn't go, of course, for the brim of his cap.)

The best experience of the time outside for me was making snowballs for Reid. (I began to lose interest after the hundredth snowball.) He was just shocked that this process could possibly occur right before his eyes. I kept making them and he kept throwing them at our car (naturally). Eventually, we had cleared an entire Honda Civic of snow, only to transfer it in sticky lumps to the tires and quarter panels of the very same vehicle. Good times.

Reid received a Superhero kit at Christmas (thanks, Grammie and Paw-Paw), and at some point in January, after slipping into his costume once or twice right at Christmas, Reid took up his secret identity with renewed vigor. Caught in a moment of repose, "Captain Commando" prepares to fight for truth, justice and capes for everyone.

A consistent complaint of parents is that the gifts you give your young children often fade when compared to the packaging, baubles and bells that are the trapping of the season. Sania's first Christmas was no exception to that rule. And while in the weeks since Christmas, Sania has actually warmed to many of her gifts, the first few days of January were all about boxes, ribbons and jingle bells.