We also pretended we could see Auntie’s house too, even though, according to Mason she lives in the boonies and another country. We stopped, enjoyed the fresh air, the slowing of our hearts after the climb, and tried to find our house in the distance. We also looked for new or creepy bugs and took pictures of them, too. Mason and I made it our mission to take pictures of all the flowers we found on the trail with the plan to look them up at home and read about them. Then we ALWAYS turn around, look at that hill we just dominated, and she screams “WE DID IT! WE MADE IT!” We feel the fear and step into it anyway. My favorite part of this? I get to hold my daughter’s hand and teach her how to face challenges in a controlled way. take it one step at a time, then repeat this cycle until we’ve made it up the literal or figurative hill. Just like this current situation, there are two important things we always have to do with faced with a hard challenge:Ģ.

Then I insert some distracting example of a time that she did something REALLY hard. Look, yes, this is hard, but we’ve done hard things before. I love hiking with Hailey because she gets tired and starts to say, “I can’t do this.” This is always my chance to be her biggest fan and life coach. It was a fun little game of “Mommy will carry you up this massive hill for 10 seconds, and then you walk for 20 seconds, and then sadly repeat until mommy passes out.” We took that opportunity to practice counting to 10 and then to 20. The boys charged up the hill, as if they had boundless energy and no fear of climbing hills, and Hailey and I took the hills slowly and one step at a time.

Hailey got to find snails and was ever so careful to avoid them. This was such a great learning and bonding experience for our family. We decided to hike the hills behind our house to limit our contact with others and because Hailey has never joined us on “artichoke mountain” before.

One Picture Two Hearts by Christy Goss