When the temperatures fall too low around here I favour restricting at least some of our snow play to a location that benefits from being heated. Huwyl loves this simple activity and I love watching his continued development as he embellishes and alters this familiar game.
The ingredients in this recipe are simple. A roasting tray filled with snow from our back step (the fluffy kind is best for painting, the icy stuff is good for sculptures) and some watered paints with brushes. Voila, one happy child for close to an hour.
Today he chose to work with red, orange and yellow; perhaps seeking out the warmth of colour to contrast with the sharp, cold white of the snow. Outside our window the world seems made up of black and white, with the black increasingly receding against a soft, neutral landscape of undulating snow.
In our kitchen, though, the white was beaten back and replaced with the heat of mid-summer colours.
I love to watch my little lad so absorbed, regardless of my observation. I can see in the curve of his cheek, the babe he once was. But that babe is receding and the boy is so closely in the foreground, his mind at work shaping the world around him.
But I know that in my mind, in my heart, the babe will always be there.
Always.
Emmalina and Her Unfeasibly Large Bonnet 