Sledding’s Not For Kids

Today was one of those perfect days for sledding, and we took full advantage of it.  It snowed 2 days ago, just enough to recoat all the hills, but long enough ago for it to pack down a little bit.  If you don’t have fresh snow, then it doesn’t take long for the hills to become a giant sheet of packed down snow ice.  I found out the hard way just how dangerous this can be a few weeks ago.

A few weeks ago I took Little Miss, Nolie, CamCam and Little Hurricane sledding.  Although we’ve had an abundance of snow here this winter, the hill had been used a LOT and so had bare spots.  In the spots that weren’t bare, the snow had become so packed down it was as slippery as ice and as hard as concrete.  Not to mention the jumps.  Over the winter, kids make jumps in various spots down the hill, some were quite impressive.    When we got out of the van, Nolie commented on how steep the hill was.  I told him we’d only go half way up, that way it wouldn’t be so scary.  Nolie still was pretty nervous the whole time.  Little Hurricane had a blast being pulled around on the sled by me.  And CamCam had no fear.  He LOVED sledding.  Little Miss was so patient, she stayed low on the hill with the little boys so she could help me out with them.  As we were about to leave, she asked if she could go to the top of the hill for her final run.  I told her sure, and then CamCam said he wanted to go with her. 

“Are you sure?  It’s pretty high,” I asked him.  He told me it wasn’t too high, it was fun and he wanted to go.  I’d been watching all these other little kids going down the hill from the top the whole time, so I told Little Miss to wait for CamCam.

“Are you sure mom?” she asked. “It’s really high up here and steep.” I assured her he’d be fine, that she just needed to hold onto him really tight and he’d be ok.  She didn’t agree. “Mom, I’ll just come down there, I don’t think he should go up here.”  I assured her it was ok.  So down they went.

About a quarter of the way down the dad standing next to me commented on how fast they were flying down the hill.

About half way down the hill I started to think this wasn’t such a good idea.

About three-quarters of the way down Little Miss tried to swerve the sled to avoid one of those jumps kids had made, and instead the sled turned over.  I watched as Little Miss rolled not once but twice over CamCam, and then she slid across the snow with him under her. 

“That’s gonna hurt,” the dad said.

I started to make my way down the hill, but it was slow going considering I was holding Little Hurricane.  Little Miss kept yelling at me to hurry, that CamCam was bleeding and I needed to hurry.  There's nothing like trying to scale down a hill of ice while holding a two year old, all while your daughter is yelling at you to hurry up because there’s blood everywhere and your 5 year old’s yelling after you, “Don’t leave me up here alone MOM!”

There really wasn’t that much blood, but CamCam’s face was all cut up from being slid across the snow with Little Miss on top of him.  Poor little guy.

Needless to say, that pretty much put an end to me taking the kids sledding solo.  From here on out the little boy to grownup ratio will be MUCH higher.