First Real Snowfall

We're just back inside from walking Annie to school on the first truly snowy day of this season.  She woke me up this morning by standing next to the bed and saying, "Is this snow going to stay?  Is it going to snow all day?  Mom, come look out the window and see the snow!"

It's just a dusting so far, but enough that I packed snowpants for Annie for the playground and bundled Jemma in them for the walk to school.  After we said good-bye to Annie, Jemma desperately wanted to play on the snow-covered playground, so I let her swing and teeter-totter for a few minutes.  She had the whole playground to herself.  Then we walked (slowly) home, Jemma trying to make snowballs out of snow that won't quite stick together.

When we got to our yard, she asked to stay outside and play.  She had a very specific list of things she wanted to do, and I was mildly surprised that she really remembered how to play in the snow.  I know she's almost four, but her memory of things like this isn't too remarkable.  She sat down in the snow, and when I asked if she was going to make a snow angel, she laid right back and began moving her arms and legs just right.

"Now I want to make a track with a stick!" she said, getting up and looking around the yard for a stick she could drag next to her while she made footprints down the sidewalk.  She did this for a while and marveled at the trail she left behind herself.

When I told her it was time to go inside, she said, "Wait!  First I want to smack a snow-covered tree!" and I realized that what she was doing - what she had been doing all along, really - was re-enacting the book The Snowy Day.  Whether or not she has many memories of playing out in the snow a whole year ago, she was Peter in her imagination, making snowballs, making angels, making tracks, and smacking a tree to see if the snow would fall down on her head.

Just now, she's eating Part II of breakfast, and then we're on to dance, laundry, and a million other things between now and bedtime.  But I promise that sometime later today, we'll go "out together into the deep, deep snow" and see if the snow falls down "Plop! - on top of Peter's head."