Woeful Bliss

Agonizing. Painful. Frustrating. Angry. Annoying. Lamentable… Not necessarily the words you want to use when describing your first visit to the snow, which you love, with your kiddo. A few weeks ago we posted some, let’s be honest, BEAUTIFUL & ADORABLE pictures of our B3 family in the snow 😉 What we didn’t post were photos of the painful, excruciating minutes that felt like hours directly after our cute shots. The full picture of our day was incomplete on social media.

I was so stoked to take Blayke out in the snow. We found the cutest snowsuit at a local consignment shop and paired with an adorable tiny hat with a poof, our little tootsie was ready for anything. Blayke napped on the drive to the snow-filled mountains like a tiny champion and awoke anxious to play. It was time for her to eat, but she seemed so happy we decided to just roll with it and feed her when she started getting fussy. I mean look how cute & happy she was. Mistake #1.

So off we go, on a little trail out in the middle of the woods. Hands down, this mini-hike was everything I dreamed it would be. Sharma was thoroughly enjoying himself, Blayke was cooing and chatting up a storm, Brice was singing little rhymes, and I was simply soaking it all in. You could almost hear the Andy Griffith theme song whistling through the trees. Pure Bliss.

After a while, Blayke started to fuss ever so slightly letting us know she was ready for lunch. The phrase ‘Just a little farther’, while extremely useful and valid when hiking with anyone other than an infant, might have been said one too many times as we looked for a perfect place to sit, feed her, and take pics. By the time we found a good spot, the tears were falling and the tranquility of nature was interrupted.

She was instantly satisfied once the bottle appeared and she began guzzling her liquid lunch. Apparently riding in a backpack works up quite the appetite 😉 Once finished, God gifted us with about 15 more minutes of adorable, sweet, funny, quiet, charming, inquisitive Blayke. Thankfully, Brice is a photographic wizard and encapsulated our bliss into perfect timestamps that I’ll hold dear forever.

Note: It is soooooo hard to get a baby AND a dog to look at a camera that you’ve set on a timer and then run towards the two innocent faces that love their daddy so much they don’t want to peal their eyes away to look at the phone on a stick. So when you finally get a picture where their both looking, you become OK with the fact that it’s not the adults best picture.

From the very beginning, we’ve said we won’t let having a baby stop us from exploring. We’ve worked hard to take Blayke on adventures and given her the opportunity to be great. For the most part, she’s done amazing. Each adventure we go on, we learn something new and how to make it better next time.

For example: The first time I took Blayke to a baseball game she was about 2 weeks old. I met two other moms there with their newborns. I didn’t want to be that mom that lugged a bunch of stuff with me so I put 4 diapers and some wipes in my purse and called it good. Welp, girl decided that the baseball game was a perfect place to take a massive poop and blowout all over her Rainiers onesie and stark white pants. I wanted so badly to be lowkey but REALLY needed another outfit to put our almost translucent baby in so she wouldn’t be scorched by the sun. Enter friends, who were also new moms. Within seconds, my friends handed me a changing pad, new set of clothes, extra wipes, a bag to put the dirty clothes in, and tons of laughter. I learned that day to always bring an extra set of clothes.

Our snow hike day was no different. I was so excited about getting Blayke in the woods, that I left her pacifier attached to her seat. I miscalculated the time between her waking up from her nap to her actually eating (Normally, when she wakes up from a nap, she eats right away and then plays for a while). Blayke was tired but had crossed a line that I didn’t know she had into TOO TIRED. There was so much going on around her and we were playing with her and showing her new things and we missed the sleepy signs.

Enter crying. Once she started there was no end. There was no pacifier to help calm her down & fall asleep. Even chasing after Sharma, our fail-safe, didn’t bring the usual laughter. The tears would subside, and then restart. Subside, then restart. Eventually, there was nothing we could do but walk as quickly as possible back to the car while passing others trying to enjoy the peace of nature. We FINALLY made it back to the car after what seemed like an eternity.

We’ve been trapped in a whiteout, in a tent above treeline on Mt. Saint Helens in the dead of winter. We’ve been in the pouring down rain while trying to setup camp to escape the freezing cold. We’ve been hunkered down on the side of Mt. Rainier at 12,000 ft. in 40 mile an hour winds at 2am while Brice used his body to help shield me from the piercing fridged wind. I’d take any of those moment over a baby crying in the woods.

My social media is plastered with gorgeous adventure photos of parents & babes. Our trip to the snow started great, but ended in tears. I refuse to let that stop us from ever going out again. Now, when we go to baseball games with Blayke, we take a changing pad & extra clothes. Next time we go out in the woods, we’ll eat earlier and bring her pacifier for nap time.

I have to remember that just because we take Blayke on adventures, that doesn’t mean the adventure will be picture perfect – and that’s OK. It will be an adventure none the less and a positive attitude will go a long way.