In a recent post, we told you about some recent failures in trying to get outdoors with a fussy, highly mobile 20 month old. A number of those failures occurred in the cold weather.
Let’s be honest, we were beginning to panic – was this a trend? Were we in for a brutal winter of discontent? Or was he turning into a really opinionated (almost) two year old??
How were we going to be able to get him comfortable in cold temps???
Luckily we had a little reset visiting family in Boulder, Colorado. The temperatures were much warmer (30s vs. 10s – yeah yeah but it makes a big difference) and he loved hiking in the Osprey pack (link) – no problem. Normal, happy outdoors kid.
All hope not being lost, we returned and preserved with the ski sled in our little mountain town. This time we layered up more substantially.
New Winter Layers
These Smartwool toddler socks layered beautifully with his normal socks and in his North Face boots. We layered a Patagonia base layer (top and bottom), sweatshirt, and fleece under his Patagonia bunting. We have taken to folding the sleeves of his bunting over in lieu of gloves. So far this seems to be warmer, although we still bring mittens.
After all this layering, three days of blissful nordic skiing followed. West yelled, “wheeee”, as we went down hills.
He delighted in throwing snowballs and jumping into the snow, when we stopped to take a break. The adventure continued.
This is all to say “getting back on the horse” seems like a good motto with a toddler. Over and over and over again. Toddler preferences change daily and therefore, so do our plans.
But the bottom line never changes, which is that time outdoors is time well spent. We find a way. Take a different trail than intended. All trails are good trails.
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