My son has this week off from school thanks to winter break (I thought they just had winter break...) so I took the week off from work to stay home and hang out. I didn't make any big plans to go anywhere like Disney, but I had some ideas of little things we could do close to home to prevent me from getting completely sick of the kids and vice versa.
Today's adventure was ice skating... with all 3 kids! At first I thought it was a great idea, but as I wrangled them out the door (which is as easy as herding cats... think about it) I began to wonder how crazy I really was for taking a 2-yr-old, 4-yr-old and 9-yr-old, none of whom have any real ice skating experience. And I, myself, am amateur at best. I told them we would go, so off we went, crazy or not.
When we got to the rink, I got skates for the kids and told my oldest he could go on out once his skates were laced up. I was least worried about him. Surprisingly, I was able to get skates that would fit the 2 little kids, so I attempted to strap them on. My daughter was suddenly very scared of trying something new (hello, Mama's kid), and although she let me put the skates on she was not thrilled about standing, walking or skating in them. My youngest was being particularly stubborn at this point in time and went back and forth between wanting his boots on, wanting his boots off, and just outright not wanting to skate. I finally convinced him to put the skates on instead of his boots, and spoke the laughable words, "Now, just sit there for a minute, please." I still had to get skates, and now that I had skates on these two I wasn't going to lose my chance to get on the ice. I walked maybe 10 feet to the counter to get my skates, told the gentleman what size I needed and turned around to see my son a good 4 or 5 steps away from the bench where I had left him, bent over in half, hands on the floor. He managed to stand up and wobbled for a moment before he flopped forward again. I took my skates off the counter, scooped up my stubborn son, set him back on the bench and laced on my skates as fast as I possibly could, then we headed down to the rink. Meanwhile, my oldest had done about 5 laps around, stopping at the entrance gate each time to ask, "Are you coming? You're not ready YET?" He, apparently, still needs to learn about the fine art of preparing children under the age of 10, especially when they are feeling extremely stubborn.
We finally make it out onto the ice and my daughter starts to cry. Not a loud wailing kind of cry, but a very quiet whimpering "I don't want to be here" kind of cry. I tried every positive thing I could think of to convince her that this was indeed fun, but she cried for a good 10 minutes. The little one, Mr. Fearless, was pretty much ready to go on his own. I had push bars for both of them to help stabilize them and I had to keep telling the daredevil to hang onto his, that it was different than "regular" walking and he couldn't easily go where he wanted. After moving out into the middle of the rink without realizing it, my daughter eased up a bit and decided that this wasn't really all that torturous. The 3 of us went up and down the rink in the middle of the circle of traffic, doing our best to avoid others. They both seemed to really enjoy themselves and managed not to fall too many times! My oldest was a trooper, doing laps solo, stopping by every so often to say hi and ask how we were faring. Although I couldn't focus on him, I did watch him zig zag through a line of cones and noticed that he wasn't crawling along the wall like he was the first time he came skating. He had actually improved quite a bit. And after an hour or so, my daughter decided she really liked skating and was sad to have to go. Mr. Fearless tried a couple times, unsuccessfully, to walk to me without his push bar but was unfazed by the downward detour he took. Pushed himself right back onto his feet like he meant to sit down. We were all very tired out by the time we left, but I am so very proud of all 3 of the kids for being so determined and strong, even if they didn't want to be when we started out. I love teaching my kids new things, and this is just another page in the AHA history book!
Cheers!
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