First Snowman

Back in Novemberish, I bought my three year old daughter a new pair of boots and snow pants. We then proceeded to wait for a good snowstorm. I have been waiting all season. There were a few that were decent, but they always seemed to come at night. By the time we got home from school it was always too crusty to play in or it was gone. There was a couple of times she got to wear them to help her dad shovel the driveway.

That is actually how tonight started, except it was me shoveling instead of her dad. It started raining while we were out shopping. It then turned to snow. I couldn’t believe how big the flakes were. It was also very wet. We have a North facing driveway. If it doesn’t get cleaned off it never melts. Because Thomas wasn’t going to be home from work until late, I decided to shovel it. My daughter had actually gotten her shovel and started working on it before I even finished getting the groceries put away. After I came out she helped for a little bit, but then moved on to shoveling the grass. She has always liked snowman. One of the books she likes is Snowman at Night. 

She had started picking up snowballs and I could tell that she was trying to make a snowman. When I finished the driveway I showed her how to put the ball down and roll it so that it picks up more snow and gets bigger. It worked really well, except that it was also picking up all of the leaves we hadn’t raked up in the fall. I had the first ball in placed and the second ready to be put on top, but it wouldn’t go. I had made it too big. Because the snow was so wet, it was also really heavy, and I couldn’t lift it. After several tries I finally got the second ball on top of the first. Next I made the head and put that on top. My daughter then says that the snowman is cold. As I said she knows that snowman wear scarves and hats. I couldn’t think of a scarf I wanted to leave out in the snow. Before I had time to respond to she said he needed a carrot for a nose. This I could do for her. We went inside to find a carrot. When we got back we were dismayed to find that her snowman had fallen over. Like I said, It was too heavy. The weight of the upper two balls had crushed the bottom one. I was able to turn it slightly and put back the second ball. She ended up with a short, leaf covered snowman. I don’t think it was quite what she was looking for, but it was a snowman.

Today after church, she had to help her daddy  shovel the driveway again.  Once again she wandered away from the task at hand to play with her snowman.  The nose wasn't quite right, so she tried to fix it. She couldn't quite get it right.  Eventually the carrot broke. She picked it up out of the snow and started snacking on it. Eventually it fell over again.  It wasn't the best looking snowman, but she sure had fun.