My Girls Rock

I was catching up on my Google Reader and trying to think of what to blog about. First, an easy link: Albany Kid posted about Easter Egg Hunts already. Someone was just asking me if I’m going to update last year’s post, and that’s still my plan, soon-ish. But if you’re chomping at the bit, check it out.

Anyway, I was reflecting on our ski weekend at Mount Snow, and what really struck me is that my kids rock. They are freakishly stoic. They know how to suck it up. Oh, yes, they have their whiny moments, but they’ve got to be in, like, the 98th percentile in non-whiner-ness.

Riding through the winding Vermont hills, poor M got sick. Twice. As I was fussing and swabbing at her chin the second time, I clucked something about how we were having a bad trip, and M said, “Well, this is way better than driving to Georgia.” Cute W and I both laughed and exchanged a quick our-barfy-little-girl-rocks glance.

Then on Friday, we were rushing to get out on the slopes. Because when you pay so much for your lift tickets (and you’re incredibly cheap), you want to squeeze as much fun as possible out of the time allotted. As I put on J’s helmet, she said that it felt tight. I paused, thinking that I didn’t really have a great solution. “It’s okay,” she said, mostly because I seemed a bit stumped on what to do next, and we all wanted to get a move on.

We skied for about an hour, and then J said, “My head and eyebrows really hurt.” I pulled off the helmet and she had dents in her turtle fur thing. Apparently her head’s grown lately. Cute W, who is far more clever than I, pointed out that there was a little dial to adjust the inside of the helmet.  So I could have just dialed it bigger that morning. Instead, she’d been skiing for an hour with her head in a vise, and she only mentioned it when she thought that she couldn’t possibly take it anymore. What a badass. Sure, some mothers might decide to dwell on the fact that through their own negligence and product ignorance their child practically could have sustained some sort of brain damage. Pooh-pooh. Here’s what I’m taking from it: that child rocks.

And of course, this is accentuated when you go skiing. It seems inevitable that there’s a poor, pathetic, sobbing child on the slopes with a poor, pathetic frustrated parent losing it trying to get the kid all the way down the hill. On Friday there was a dad yelling at his son that he’d spent $240 today already and they were all going to ski, dammit! It didn’t seem like this line of reasoning was particularly effective, but of course the easiest solution–outsourcing–would have cost even more money. And you can’t even feel smug, because we’ve all–okay, I have–been there, frustrated and losing it and saying stupid stuff.  It just made me extra-grateful that we were having such a wonderful day.

Eventually, the girls did get tired out, but that first day, J lasted for 5 hours of skiing, M for 6 hours. Which, hello, they totally rock. And then, even better, we were with family, so both days we had Nana or an auntie whisk them home while Cute W and I skied on. No wonder we were all so exhausted!