So as it turns out, life doesn’t totally end when you have a baby.  It just changes.

That was my big fear about becoming a father: I would have to give up the things I loved due to the enormous child-anchor around my neck.

But over the Christmas holiday, we exposed our 4-month-old son Ian  to snowshoeing for the first time.  We simply bundled him up, put socks on his hands for gloves, strapped him into his Baby Bjorn and zipped our jackets over him to keep him toasty warm.

Christmas Day found us walking a mild snow-laden Forest Service road.  Ian woke from his nap to discover a Narnia winter wonderland surrounding him.

It was his first time he saw a billowy white forest, and he loved the sharp contrasts of the sky and trees and snow.  We lifted him to tree branches so he could observe how powder collected within the needles, and let him taste a snowball for the first time.

Everything was a smashing success, and if we’d decided to leave it at that, our memories of snowshoeing with our child would have been filled with bliss.

But this is not that story.  We just had to push our luck.

The next day found us hiking to Artist Point near the Mt. Baker ski area.  The first mile was great.  Ian slept or watched the terrain change minute by minute with a baby’s fascination.

Things went sour when we stopped for a feeding.  Amanda had been taking an antibiotic, which happened to give little Ian some painful gas soon after eating.

The calm before the storm

So a few minutes later, he started crying.  We hoped it would pass if we kept walking so we carried on, but by the time we were two miles down the trail, he reached DEFCON 4 full-on blue-face-nothing-will-comfort-me screaming.

The other hikers and skiers we met  were understanding.  A few shot us pity-filled smiles.  Most were just glad not to be us.

Then we met a woman on skis who told us it reminded her of her own childhood – lots of crying while her parents drug her into the backcountry.

But then she looked around and smiled as if to say, “look where I am now!”

In the end, nothing we did would console poor little Ian, and so we had to abandon our hike just as it was starting to get really pretty.

So lesson learned: when you have a baby, life doesn’t totally end.  It just changes.  For a while at least, we won’t be able to go as far, hike as long or take as many risks.  It hope it’s the last time we have to cut a hike short due to a crying child, but I’m pretty sure it’s just the first time that will happen.

We’ll do what we can while Ian is young, and hopefully our efforts will translate into a little dude who appreciates swishing through the backcountry like the woman we met on the trail.

Happy New Year from Married To Adventure!