This Picture is a Lie

It may look like Mace is diligently helping pack and roll snow for the snowman, but that happened once. When I took the picture. And that is all.

“But Andra,” you say, “thats an impressive-sized man-of-snow. Surely your son helped out in the building process. To say anything else would be ludicrous!”.

You know what’s ludicrous, my friends? A 2.5 year old’s work ethic. I mean, WTF?

Let me give you an example from today.

For Christmas this year one of our friends gave Mason a snowman decorating kit consisting of a hat, scarf, button eyes and so forth. Cute gift, great idea for a toddler, nothing to complain about there. We’ve been patiently waiting for the right time to use it, and today wound up being “the day”. With Avery down for a nap, Mace and I suited up and trudged outside. We were in jovial moods: him, ecstatic that we were finally building Frosty, and me, thrilled to be creating what would surely be an ever-lasting memory for Mace of quality time spent with his mom.

One push (yes, push) into snow-rolling, the kid quit on me.

“I can’t doooooo it, mom. It too haarrrrrd” he oh-so-pleasantly whined. And he could not be convinced otherwise.

Still hell-bent on the idea of ever-lasting memories, I convinced myself that Mace would join in once he saw me rolling a big snowball around and proceeded on my own. I rolled, and rolled, and rolled, and …. ok, show of hands, how many of you have recently built a snowman by yourself? And are over 30? Because when you’re doing it as an adult, it sucks. Your back hurts, your lungs seize up, you’re wheezing and panting like an asthmatic walrus. And the whole time your child is standing there on the sidelines, throwing out helpful comments like “Mommmmmmm, where’s his head? Where’s his head, mommmmmm? Why you not do his head yet?” and “You open the shed for me? Mommmmmmm? I wanna get something out of the shed”.

The fun really went up a notch when it came time to hoist the middle snowball onto the bottom one. Squatting there in my Olympic-weight-lifter pose, it took four attempts to lift it off the ground and get it in place. Ironic that it was four, as that’s the exact number of hernias which popped out during this process.  

By the time I got to the head I was a mere shadow of the woman who had entered the backyard 30 minutes earlier. Hair a mess, sweat dripping, spirit crushed. And that’s when our little work-avoidant toddler proceeded to swoop in and take over the best part of snowman-building …. the decorating.


Damn him.

My only consolation is that he made a real fool of himself putting the mouth on.


I mean seriously … does he not get basic anatomy? What the hell’s going on with that green smartie? Who’s teaching this kid?

Ha ha, Mason. I bet your face is red.


Crazy toddler.

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