There are days in Minnesota where you step outside, and you can feel the wet of your lungs crackling in your chest, the cold you've been fighting has turned brick-like in your nose, and your eyes begin to make tinkling sounds like windchimes because the tears have frozen there.
This is, of course, not too cold for a Minnesotan to get outside and play, of course. The school has a policy that involves the number five, and I can't remember if it's negative five or five above, but either way, this is the barometer for outdoor activity.
I tell you, my Southern preschoolhood would have shattered at the very idea of being outside in such temperatures! This was, after all, the city that closed school at a snowflake and plowed the streets with scrapers strapped to the fronts of garbage trucks. We lived in a valley of sloped mountains, so any flakes caused absolute thrills to streak through the school.
We are made of tougher stuff. This my girl, below, who joined Kai and her labyrinth-making for a glimmer of a moment (but my son Finnegan is chugging right along behind her, the green twins--he's wearing what he calls his "turtle jacket") but was more fascinated by the pine needle formations and licking a clump of snow than any kind of group activity. She is indeed a unique bird, and she'd love that I'm calling her that as she's fascinated with nests and eggs and such.
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