If you were the winter, I know I’d be the snow

One thing this experienced flyer knows is that Mummy gives you lollipops on aeroplanes to help your ears equalise the pressure. A whole overseas trip can be condensed in a two year old’s memory into the moment she was allowed to have a lollipop on an aeroplane.

Remember Vietnam? So much happened. Yeah. Good times. That was the time I was allowed to have a lollipop, right?

Our recent trip to the snow was a holiday of firsts. Of course there was Lauca’s first experience of snow but then there was also the first experience my brother and sister and I have had of holidaying altogether with our respective partners. Sounds like trouble, but it wasn’t, it was just lovely.

I have some adorable photographs that I can’t post because both my brother and sister are privacy nuts. My brother is a privacy conspiracist, he thinks terrible plots are afoot and prides himself on not appearing anywhere on the Internet. I just Googled him and he is all over the place, but no photographs, guess that is what he means. My sister is a television journalist and for professional reasons doesn’t want to be outed on my site. So I guess that is ok.

I’ll stick to photos of Lauca and the snow.

This is the very moment Lauca first saw snow. Can you guess she was thrilled? About a minute after this she realised that her parents weren’t being so ridiculous about that gloves thing. 

 

We’d spent a lot of time talking snow up before the trip, and you just never know with little kids. Some things that you think they’re going to love they’re indifferent to. There is every possibility that they’ll step out of the car, decide that snow is cold (duh), and immediately want to go home. But other things are every bit as successful as you’d hoped. Like snow fights. This kid loved snow fights. And I captured some cute moments on my camera, but you know, they feature the two privacy nuts, so that’s out. But Lauca loved the snow so much that I just wanted to cuddle her up and say thank you for making one of my dreams come true, this moment with you being so young and impressed by the magic of snow, I wanted this.

The two privacy nuts and their partners don’t have children yet so Lauca is the beneficiary of lots of very devoted aunt and uncle attention. Every now and then the aunts and uncles slipped off quietly to hide out, and I’m sure, say things like “can you believe the way that child is behaving, our children will never be like that”. They’ll deny it but I noticed during the snow fights that she was everyone’s favourite target. Especially her father’s. Oh, you’re not as patient as you appear, hmm?

Everything about kids in the snow is just cute, cute, cute. Except snowmen and our child’s completely over-the-top-sentimentality about them. And me, looking around and wondering why we are the only parents hauling a screaming kid across the snow because she can’t bear the emotional torment of leaving a lump of ice with a couple of twigs and a black, shrivelled frost-bitten carrot sticking out of it, behind. It is not real, it is not real.    

And that dressing bizzo. That was also a bit annoying.

But the rest was pure bliss. White, wonderland bliss.

It is only fair that you view these photos with this song playing because it was the soundtrack of the weekend. No, not the soundtrack that this song is from, just this song, playing for hours. Hours here and hours back, this song, over and over. 

Lauca gets obsessed with particular songs and then they’re the only thing she’ll listen to in the car. We were in my sister’s car and she didn’t have a single children’s CD, can you believe she could be so twenty-something, and all she could offer was this.

I know you’re probably thinking, oh how ridiculously spoilt. But, we’re rational people, and when we say we chose playing this song continuously for several hours over the alternative.. it was the best decision, believe me.