Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

If the success of a weekend can be measured by the number of times that you scream as you go hurtling down a hillside with snow flying in your face, WE WIN. We spent essentially the entire weekend taking turns crawling into a cheap plastic sled and throwing ourselves down a hill.

A big hill.

It started out all wrong. On Saturday we stopped at the big hill with the idea that we would just give it a shot. Once. We just wanted to see if the short person in our lives would enjoy the thrill of flying much faster than she can on our little "hill" in our back yard.

Uh, if screaming and crying and yelling, "The kids threw snow in my face!" is disliking real sledding, then Alexis hated it. HATED IT. I spent half the evening fussing at her about lying (the kids did not throw snow in her face--the sled did) and the other half studying what she was saying when words weren't actually coming out of her mouth.

I had a hunch that she actually maybe liked it.

So, Sunday we loaded up and headed to the hill again. When Alexis was quick to start pulling her sled up the hill, I became more confident that I had read her right.

And then she came back down the hill with Mr. Husband.

That's not her I'm Having the Best Time Ever Face.

But that is. It seems she just needed a second to think about it.

The trick for the little nutjob is that she has to face backwards. She doesn't like when snow flies in her face, but she sure does think it's hilarious when her weight ends up distributed unevenly and she makes you go spinning like a top.

I don't think the pictures really show just how big and just how steep that hill is, but that's us flying backwards down that hill at crazy high speeds, just before we nearly crashed into about a dozen people. Apparently the eyes in the back of my head are only good for detecting Alexis shenanigans. Fortunately, the kids we nearly crashed into have enough of a survival instinct that they moved out of the way.

Up and down we went, over and over and over. The only reason we managed to drag the kid away from her new favorite hobby was that she ended up needing to go to the bathroom.

Later Sunday night, I turned on the news to see if there's a chance that the snow will still be there next weekend. We NEED to do a ton more sledding. Of course, I turned the TV on just in time to see a story about the dozen or so kids who wound up in the emergency room after sledding accidents. I'm not sure what the universe is trying to tell me with that crazy coincidence, but I think I'll ignore it.

Counting Down the Minutes Until this Month Ends

Apparently we should mark our calendars for the next fourteen years. We need to grab a fat red marker and write CHALLENGING across January. For four years running, January has been "challenging." And by "challenging," I mean OMG! This kid!

Alexis is, generally speaking, an easy to get along with kid. She's mostly good, complete with a side of sassy. The thing is, she likes to express all that is impossible about a particular age nonstop for about a month before she actually is that age. Every year has been the same.

Right before she turned one, she thought it would be GREAT FUN to carry out the whole One Year Olds are Insane Plan. All the new-found independence and lack of concern for safety that you expect of a one-year old was bottled up for Alexis, and she dumped that sucker out all. at. once. Walking through a parking lot with her was like trying to hold a spastic Frogger's hand as you drag him kicking and screaming to the safety of the log on the other side of the river. Only, Frogger doesn't want your help because he thinks he would look spectacular splattered on the front of that semi. Oh, and he plans to scream "PLEASE CALL CYS! I'M BEING ABUSED!" Just for fun.

A whole month. Impossible. And then, all of sudden, it stopped and the kid was almost human again. Sure, she still had her I'm Feeling One moments, but not that frequently.

Then there was the month before two. "Terrible" would be an understatement. Imagine a whole year's worth of terrible concentrated into one short month. THAT. THAT is what we survived. And then two itself was actually pretty damn fun.

Three was the same thing. Everybody who has been there will say that three is WAY worse than two, and that it is. When you concentrate all of its drama and whining and general buttheadery into one month? It's a miracle no lives were taken. Truly.

And now here we are on the cusp of four. I know that we just have to hang in there, be consistent, and scare the rotten out of her with lots of love. All the fun that four can bring is right there, just waiting for us. If we survive this month.

That's a big if.

This is What Almost Four Looks Like