Ice, Ice Baby

Another day, another winter adventure! There were enough fun photos from this day to give it a post of its own.

In early December, after the first snowfall had melted away, we had a cold snap. I heard through the grapevine of a pond near town that had frozen over like glass. So I took Nick and Maya on a mystery excursion one Sunday afternoon. My informant was a pond hockey enthusiast organizing a game, and sure enough there was a crew pursuing a puck with clattering sticks. We didn't have our skates, but we had a smaller pond all to ourselves and a baby to introduce to the wonder of a frozen lake.

She looks awfully small there, doesn't she? Don't worry, we were right there too! Nick took off his belt and we employed it for some baby-sliding.

She thought it was great.

Anything that gets Mama and Papa down at her level being silly is pretty great.

Like just about everybody nowadays, I have a camera at my fingertips more often than not, and so I agonize. How much time to devote to capturing a moment to remember and savor in the future? When to put the camera away and just enjoy the moment, knowing that it will likely fade from memory? It's even more complicated now that I spend my days with a tiny person who changes before our very eyes, so that I have such limited time to capture each stage. Not to mention that this is a powerful way to share with the rest of the family who doesn't get to see her day in and day out. And if future Maya is anything like me, she may pore over these photos from her childhood many years from now.

I love days like these when something seasonally magical changes the landscape enough that it becomes extra-memorable. Sometimes I call them "celebrations" in a nod to a favorite book by Byrd Baylor, I'm in Charge of Celebrations, which is all about marking these unexpected and extraordinary encounters with the natural world.

For exactly that reason, this adventure is probably less likely than most of our daily activities to get lost in the memory-soup that's always simmering and reducing in my brain. But I admit that I'm still glad I took pictures!