Following Finland

I have always believed, “I can do cold.”  If I have the right clothes, I can do anything (thank you Patagonia).  I have even experienced some extreme temps living in beautiful Steamboat Springs, Colorado where I have been blessed with epic powder days and (maybe not-so-blessed on this one) a few run-ins with frostbite.  (I gleefully recall the day about five years ago when our schools closed for the first time in two decades because of supposed temps of -40 F and wind chill factor of -56 F “over at the middle school.” I was ecstatic but after I received that 5:30 a.m. phone call I was so excited that I was unable to go back to sleep… truly feeling like a kid on Christmas morning!)

So yes, I believed, “I can do cold.”

What I never really gave a whole lot of thought to was doing cold (correction: extreme cold) with a two-year-old.

 

Wait! We just had that other layer on!  It is all about the layers but when Lou decides to go head-to-head and takes off the layers nearly as quickly as we put them on then it makes for a big challenge in getting to the bus on time.

(Oh, you don’t understand my Finnish bus schedule???)

Well, we missed the bus so we will just play outside for a bit.

Chris and I are trying to be strategic in how we get this kid, and ourselves for that matter, dressed to head out in these temps (oh, yes -28 Celsius and dropping by the day).  If we dress ourselves completely first then by the time we get him dressed and out the door we are super-sweaty and then we get cold because we are wet underneath.  If we dress him first he starts undressing himself when we are getting dressed and we are back to square one (I am sure Groundhog Day fans would love a secret camera in our foyer).  What we have been doing the last few days is each putting on a layer in a sort of rotation so that by the time we are all dressed we are all just warm enough to want to get the heck out of the house but not so warm that we are feeling rivulets of sweat on the smalls of our backs. Then, we can actually get outside and play for the 21.23 minutes or so that it is safe for kids to be outside in temps like these.