Winter seems to have a way of slowing people down.
Perhaps it’s the lack of Vitamin D that the spring and summer sunshine generates. Maybe it's the cold temperatures or the need to slow down after the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.
In my case, it's all of the above.
For some unexplained reason, however, kids never seem to get the “slow down” memo. In fact, it seems that the winter months make my kids wigglier than ever.
They are running up and down the stairs, riding sleeping bags down said stairs and kicking soccer balls against the walls. And, if your kids are like mine, a summer filled with watching “American Ninja Warrior” only fueled their need to spider climb in the doorways and hop from couch to piano bench to end table to my back in an effort to avoid the floor at all costs.
I want so badly to tell them to take it outside, but I know that gathering winter gear and cleaning up wet/muddy footprints is a massive undertaking considering the small amount of time my kids last in the cold.
Worse yet, I have found myself begging my kids to watch a movie or even play a video game in an effort to regain a bit more household control.
“Why don’t you sit still?” I find myself asking them.
After one particular “crazy-house” moment, I had an epiphany: The more I yelled at my kids for being active during the winter and the more I forced them to be sedentary, the more they would see winter as the “season for sitting.”
It wasn’t my kids who needed to slow down. I needed to pick up the pace. And let me tell you, it has been awesome!
When my kids ask me to play, I do my best to join in. The belly laughs one gets while riding a silk pillowcase down 12 stairs is as good as any ab workout I’ve done. And a good old game of hide-and-seek, where you are always the seeker, makes for a great cardiovascular exercise.
But when I am not able to join in the fun, nothing burns calories or generates sweat more than a good, solid house-cleaning. Who needs P90X when you have to vacuum two flights of stairs and five bedrooms with an 80-pound Kirby in tow?
So, my advice to all of you parents like me who didn’t get the memo that the winter months are not for slowing down: Take your cue from your kids, and pick up the pace.
Arianne is a mother of six young children. Her downtime is spent running the trails of the Wasatch Mountains and beyond. Contact her at ariannebrown1@gmail.com or search her Facebook page A Mother's Write or follow her on Twitter @arimom6.