Snowy Giggles

Last night Teddy asked to go outside to play, so we headed out with a beautiful snow falling. My intention was to get the driveway cleared, so that it would be easier to finish in the morning. Teddy loves dragging shovels around, so I was optimistic I'd be able to get the driveway shoveled. None of the neighbors were out, and all their garage doors are shut, which was good because those are instant magnets that lure Teddy to them.

This was earlier in the day, before the snowfall. It was dark by the time we had snow.

Well, after about 5 minutes, Teddy thought it would be funny if he made his way to the neighbor's driveway. It took him several minutes because he was dragging a giant shovel and trudging through a couple feet of snow because he walked through the lawn. He was laughing the whole time, knowing he was being mischievous. I waited until he was close to heading up their walkway to go retrieve him and bring him back to our driveway. No sooner did I start shoveling again did he take off for another neighbor's driveway, laughing the entire way, with his shovel in tow. Once again, I kept shoveling until he got nearly to their door and then ran over to retrieve him. 

Fortunately, each time he willingly walked back to our house, instead of flopping to the ground like a 70-pound sack of flour. We headed back and resumed shoveling our driveway. He made a couple passes before he took off for a third neighbor's driveway. When I went to retrieve him that time, he was literally collapsed in the snow in a fit of giggles because he thought he was absolutely hilarious. Each time he'd fall, he'd eat the snow off his mittens or the ground, which is pretty standard for Wisconsin children during fresh snowfall.

He made it to a fourth neighbor's house before I tried to encourage him to bring out our garbage bin because it needed to go out for the morning anyways. He interpreted that as go to the neighbor's bin and attempt to drag it to our yard. That let me finish the shoveling, as much as I could, before I retrieved him one more time. That time the garbage can flipped and dumped a pile of snow in his face. I just chuckled and told him he deserved it. 

I had thought it was odd when we went out to shovel that there were footprints leading to our door, until I saw that someone's dog had traipsed through our driveway and around our house. I can only imagine what our neighbors thought with random shovel passes, lots of little and big footprints and flop marks. 

The Giggles

One of the wonderful traditions in my husband's family is a Christmas party where the majority of his mom's family gathers at a hall. They need to rent a hall because his mom is one of 13 children, so there's lots of aunts and uncles, more cousins and now more second cousins than most in attendance can name. All the little children tend to gravitate to the gymnasium, which I swear they barely heat in winter, to run and play.

Teddy loves the bleachers in the gym, climbing up and down them, making others sit next to him and generally spending a lot of his time there. That is great, until he notices the stage, which is supposedly off limits. Other children go on the stage, but we do our best to keep our children off to avoid getting into trouble, particularly Teddy. Once he notices the stage and how fun it appears to be, it's sometimes a physical struggle and tears to keep him off both sets of steps, one on either side of the stage.

This year, however, it became a game that was great fun for him and a pretty darn good speed workout for me. He'd take off for the stairs, and I'd dash past him and sit on the stairs. He'd start giggling and turn back toward the other side. I'd beeline past him, sit on the stairs and he'd keep giggling. We continued this for quite some time, with Teddy laughing so hard that he fell over ... twice.

For whatever reason, it was hilarious to him, and I couldn't help but laugh as he collapsed into giggles. We both had a great time instead of a great fight over whether he could go up the stairs, which made for a great afternoon (although I was rather tired by the end of the party).

It's hard not to attend these parties and think back to the first years with Teddy, where it was so hard because we couldn't stop comparing him to the other children his age (or younger) who were far ahead of him developmentally. Time has helped us to appreciate the joy in what he can do, which is an awful lot. This little boy was running, giggling and loving life. And I was able to be present (physically and mentally) to soak up the magic.

Friends Make the World Better

This was a good weekend. There was nothing extravagant, nothing extraordinary and nothing that cost a lot of money to create a memorable experience.

But we spent time with friends. Both AJ and Teddy had play dates with different friends Saturday morning. We dropped AJ at his friend's house while Teddy's friend Max came to our house to play. I don't know that I'll ever get tired of watching Teddy and Max play together. My absolute favorite is when Max puts his face inches away from Teddy's face and makes Teddy giggle. Teddy fell over from laughing so hard at Max being silly this weekend. Teddy also finished Max's banana (yet again) because Max saw Teddy eying it up.

I think part of what makes these play dates so special is that I honestly hadn't expected Teddy to be having friends over for play dates. Sure, we have our family friends over for play dates, but that's not the same as Teddy having his friend over to play. Maybe I thought it would happen at some point down the road, but not at this stage.

And yet it has.

I swear Teddy is more talkative and babbles more when he's playing with Max. I also swear that it carries over when Max leaves. It's like it opens up Teddy's communication because he's so excited and having so much fun, and that muscle memory sticks around for a few hours or even days.

On Sunday we managed to get to church together as a family, which is a rare occurrence because sometimes it leaves us feeling more frustrated than fulfilled. Today wasn't one of those days. Yes, Teddy still managed to crawl under the pew and spent a good portion of Mass walking everywhere with Dave. But the folks behind us offered encouraging words to both Dave and I. There were moments where I had my arms around both boys that I wasn't trying to wrangle or contain them and felt contentment instead. There was a song after communion that really resonated with me even though I can't remember any of it at the moment.

Our day ended with our family friends coming over, along with another friend of mine, for dinner and cuddling the littlest babe. Their daughter is absolutely fantastic with our boys, so Teddy and AJ were entertained while us adults got a bit of time to catch up. And then we did silly stuff, like spin Teddy in our papasan chair and put an 11-year-old athletic girl on my back for a quick ride to show off our new kid carrier. (I will say that Teddy actually felt light when he climbed on after the 11-year-old child. Never knew that could happen.) The laughter, the conversation, the ease, the comfort ... everything is better with friends.