Jack and Liam are skiing. After years of dragging them up to the mountain a few times every winter, carrying arm fulls of miniature boots and skis and mittens and hats and goggles, attempting to feign cheerfulness while coercing them up the magic carpet conveyor belt and down the hill, we couldn’t be more shocked. It seems like just yesterday that Liam would inevitably plop himself down in a pile of snow, refuse to move and wait for hot cocoa, while Jack would insist on skiing straight down and throw his body into a spinning hockey “stop” at the bottom.

This winter, however, on the very first day we took them skiing, they both figured out how to actually manage a proper stop, and with that, in one of the unexpected and astonishing learning explosions that seem to keep coming lately, they became skiers. In the few months since the miraculous appearance of their power wedges, they have taught themselves to turn well enough that we can ski with them on “green circles and blue squares” all over the mountain. They eagerly study the trail map as if it is a portal to another world and keep a running inventory of all conquered runs, with such menacing names as Honeysuckle, White Feather and Bambi. Not only are they skiing now, but they adore it and they beg us to do it, and we’re trying not to blow it by letting on just how happy it makes us when Jack asks, “Mama, how many days left until skiing?” or when Liam asks “How old do you have to be to ski Kachina Peak, Dad?”

I suppose we could have forced ski school upon them, and Taos Ski Valley’s ski school is renowned as one of the best, but a frigid day and an unfortunate bathroom incident turned Jack and Liam off from it permanently. Besides, Oban and I met while teaching skiing, so we know what can happen there. Oban once lost one of his young students in a half frozen river next to the return trail, and did not notice until returning to the base. (I’m sure this is what must have made me realize he was almost ready for fatherhood.) Luckily, someone else did notice and she was rescued by the ski patrol before he realized where he’d lost her.

Back in those single days, Oban and I listened to Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall album every time we drove to the ski valley in his 1988 Jeep Grand Wagoneer. “That’s what you call old school!” I tell Jack and Liam (borrowing a line from Obama) who demand to listen to Justin Timberlake for the drive up, particularly the song they call Flashing Lights. It makes me feel strangely content to hear Jack sweetly singing from the back seat: “She looks like a model, except she’s got a little more ass…”

And we are proudly relishing every moment of skiing like a family of ducks, with Oban in the front and me in the back, trying to protect our singing, skiing children from all those pesky grown-ups lumbering down the slopes with boards strapped to their feet, aware that there is only a brief window of time before Jack and Liam realize what big dorks they have for parents, and want to ski only with their friends. For now, they’re stuck with us, skiing to the Bavarian Lodge for hot cocoa and chicken schnitzel and dancing as DJ Little Will mixes our favorite music; Prince, Beastie Boys and if we’re lucky, Michael Jackson.