On the ice…

I did not skate as a child.  I tried, but to no avail.  I used figure skates, hockey skates, molded skates…but nothing ever helped.  My ankles just seemed to turn right in and I would spend the majority of the time on my butt, or on my face.  Neither was fun.  Especially when friends were learning and getting better while I was not.  In Grade 6 I hung up those ugly molded skates and never looked back.

And then I met Dan.  And he was an avid skater who asked one too many times for me to join him on the canal and so I decided to try again.  And the most amazing thing happened.  I could skate.  It had been 100 years, but I was skating.  Without very many spills in between.  Turns out, like most things in life, the negative attitude I had as a kid was actually my biggest obstacle.I could skate all along, I just didn’t want to.

So we decided that Jaia should be introduced to skating while she was young so that she wouldn’t have the same experience as I did.  The thing though, is that with her turning 2 in the winter, I thought she might be a little young.  So we waited until she was 3.  We took her out a few times on those adorable little double bladed skates and she loved it, but they fell off at every turn.  When she turned 4, “Santa” brought her some skates with pink laces and she was in love.  We again went a few times, but we had just moved.  And we spent much of the winter unpacking and taking care of an infant – neither opening up a ton of opportunities for a lot of ice time.

So, with that long list of excuses, we find ourselves again in winter with a 5 year old who is eager to learn to skate and a mama full of regret for having waited so long.  This weekend though, we made the decision to get off our heinies and get out on the ice.  No more excuses.

And when we do something, we do it big.  This weekend that meant heading out to the outdoor rink in -20 to have our first family skate of the year.  Wes included.

We bundled up, brewed up a pot of hot chocolate and headed out into the seriously bitter cold.  My temporarily bare hands froze in seconds.  But once all skin was covered, we were good.

At first, Wes was loving his new skates.  But just like his sister before him, they fell off after 5 minutes.  So he walked.  And lasted about 20 minutes before he was too cold.  Dan and Jaia made it about 40 minutes with a hot chocolate break in the middle.

Mmmmm…hot chocolate…

For a beginner, the bean is doing fantastic.  She doesn’t understand that when they are learning (and beyond), everybody falls,  so when she does, she takes it as a failure to be able to skate.  I, on the other hand, see it as a rite of passage.  And if you are outside, on skates, you are SKATING.  It only gets better from there…