Winter is tough with little ones.
The Boy is a very intelligent, very active four-year-old, which is to say, he’s uncontainable. He’s bouncing off the walls. It’s a challenge in the warmer months, but it’s exponentially worse in the winter months. It’s too cold outside to run around for very long, and he’s too young for any of the organized sports. Add that The Wife and I aren’t skiers or joggers or anything along those lines, and it’s tough to find ways to burn off his energy between late November and March.
We do what we can, but a distressing amount of our time is spent playing traffic cop, trying to keep The Boy and The Girl apart. She wants to be wherever he is, but his favorite indoor activity is building remarkably elaborate cities out of blocks and matchbox cars. Naturally, being the age she is, her form of participation consists in knocking everything down, which really sets him off.
The only thing (other than blocks) that stops his constant motion is tv, but we don’t like to go to that well too much.
Anybody who has tried to play traffic cop with a four-year-old for more than a few hours knows what I’m talking about. It’s sort of like yelling at the sun.
The Wife has it worst, since she has to deal with it seven days a week. I at least have the relative ‘break’ of a full-time, high-stress job. Long commutes aren’t entirely bad...
Question for other parents of little ones in colder climes: what do you do with them in the winter? It’s only January, and we’re completely out of ideas. And, heaven help us, The Boy gets stronger and faster every day.
