"Do you need a cane?" my 4-year-old asked me on a hike. "You look pretty old."

"How old do you think I am?" I asked her, hunched over, teeth chattering.

"Hmm, about 88," she said so innocently it was almost endearing. Almost.

"Eighty-eight?!" I exclaimed. "I'm still in my 30s."

"What? You're younger than Grammy? No way."

I'm not sure whether I should be more concerned about her lack of civility or her lack of math and lineage awareness. "Yes, darling, I'm younger than Grammy."

The weather has turned in Montana, where our RV has been stationed for the past couple of weeks. At night, we often hit below freezing. During the day, it's in the 50s and raining sporadically. I bundle the children up in sweatshirts and coats, hats and mittens, only to be reminded, as I am always reminded this time of year, that children are actually X-Men and feel no cold. You wouldn't know they feel no cold, noses red and dripping, fingers white, teeth chattering, and yet...

Every parent who experiences snow days knows what I'm talking about — the kids running up and sledding down the hill while the parents huddle in a circle like a waddle of emperor penguins, heads down, backs to the wind, risking hypothermia to break from the waddle every few minutes to give a thumbs-up and a "yeah, I saw that!" to their respective children, asking in a not-quite-pushy way whether it's time to go home because it is, after all, getting kind of cold. And didn't your child used to have a nose? It must've fallen off on the 148th trip down the hill.

It's often around this time when my children will say something about how my age has given me thin skin and I can't handle the pleasures of the great outdoors when the temperature drops below 60. And there is probably some validity to that. I'd like to argue, however, that my age has made me human and that somehow our youths are actually mutant creatures. Their veins flow with hot chocolate, their baby fat magically lined with whatever magical insulation is in the coats climbers wear when they scale Everest. The baby fat probably crackles like a warm Yule log, shimmers blue and plays music. All my adult fat is just, well, fat. And I'm cold.

I checked on the children as they played. My daughter was in a tank top. My son was in shorts. I could've sworn I'd sent them outside in different clothes.

"You did," my 8-year-old said proudly, pointing to a makeshift nest, where their jackets formed a circle filled with grass and topped with all sorts of stuffed animals. "We made a nest. We're hatching king cobra eggs!"

I took off my hat and put it on my son's head. I took off my sweatshirt and wrapped it around my daughter. I went inside and poured myself more hot coffee and got under the covers. When I went back outside, my sweatshirt had been made into a cradle.

"You're a grandma!" my son declared as I bent over, shivering. The imaginary king cobra eggs had hatched. At least now that I'm a grandma, my look matches my family position.

Last week, my family was at Glacier National Park. There was a 5-mile hike that initially, only my son and I could do because the parking lot was always full. My husband and daughter wanted to do the hike, too, so on our last day there, we tried to find a parking spot again and were successful — but only because it was a cold, rainy day. The kids, of course, were not deterred by the weather. The kids wanted to go. I bundled them and myself up, and up we went, into the icy rain.

"Mama!" my son said excitedly. "I can't feel my fingers! Isn't that cool?" I looked at his hands. They were white. I took off my sweatshirt from under my poncho and wrapped it around his hands.

"What about me?" my daughter said. "I can't feel my hands, either." Neither child seemed too bummed by the pending frostbite. I knew I'd given them gloves, but they'd probably offered them to a chipmunk. I took off my poncho and put it around my daughter. She looked like E.T. trick-or-treating. Her hands warmed up.

Walking back down the mountain, I was drenched and hunched to keep warm.

"Do you need a cane?" my daughter asked. "You look pretty old."

I should've asked for her mutant baby fat instead. But, "Yes."

Katiedid Langrock is author of the book "Stop Farting in the Pyramids," available at http://www.creators.com/books/stop-farting-in-the-pyramids. Follow Katiedid Langrock on Instagram, at http://www.instagram.com/writeinthewild. To find out more about her and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.