Roller-Fiasco

DaVinci's class had a roller skating party today, and I made the mistake of trying to be a Super Mom/wife. You see, DaVinci also has a birthday party to go to on Sunday and D had nothing special to do. As I stated previously, he has been a bit of a grump and I think that part of it might be attributed to the monotony of the month of January - the rain, the gray, being cooped up in the house... I know it can get me into a low mood. The skating party was billed as a "family party" so I thought "Great! I can bring both kids and leave Z home to do his grad school homework. Everyone wins!"

I forgot one little thing. Skating is hard.

D falls asleep on the way, there is no parking for blocks so we have to rush through the rain (me carrying the sleepy D of course) yelling at DaVinci to not step in the puddles when frankly its been raining so long and so hard at this point that the whole sidewalk (and maybe the whole city) is one big puddle. I am in a bit of a rush from the get-go because I am shuttling the kids straight from skating to my folks' house so that Z and I can go out for the night to celebrate my BDay. We get inside and the whole place is hot and steamy. I am not built for hot and steamy, so my blood pressure immediately rises. They are out of skates in the sizes we need, I lace up DaVinci's skates all the way, only to then notice that she put them on the wrong feet, etc etc etc.

Then comes the hard part. I guess I was under the mistaken impression that all skate rinks have the little plastic fisher-price skates that snap on to your shoes and then don't actually roll. In my head, I pictured D marching along in those while I held DaVinci's hands and helped her along in "big kid skates." But no, all three of us were in those classic tan high top skates with bright orange wheels. They rolled really well. Neither kid could stay upright. DaVinci was able to work it out enough to hug the wall, and even ventured out a few times into the rink to fall and fall and fall. D was completely hopeless. I took his skates off after about 5 minutes. He was happy to go in the snack room to eat and watch us as I took DaVinci a couple of times around the rink. She got better, but let's just say she is not the most coordinated child. And it was so hot. It took all of my muscles and balance to hold her flailing body upright and keep myself from falling. Did I mention I was hot? After a couple of times around we joined D for a snack, turned in our skates and hit the road.

On the plus side, D did not fuss and complain that he couldn't skate, and DaVinci had a great time. I would like to go to a skate rink again minus D to focus more on teaching DaVinci to skate. I LOVED skating as a kid (and still like it) and would love to share that with her.

Z did a great job of coordinating our night. We sat at a coffee shop and drank coffee, went to dinner at Three Doors Down, where we had a delicious meal and the best seat in the house, browsed books at Powells, and saw "The Kings Speech," which was really good. When we got home, we took a trip down memory lane and looked at the photo albums from our trips overseas before we had kids. It was great to share the memories of the places we went, make fun of Z's dorky haircuts through the ages, and to reflect on how long we have known each other, and how much of our experience is shared between us. We have now known each other for half of our lives, and have a staggering amount of history in common. The kids create so much volume in our lives and fill our days so full that it is really important to have time for just the two of us. We are able to tell complete stories without interruption, and are able to really talk and enjoy each other's company. We are really fortunate to have family in town that are so good with the kids that we can just drop them off without worry, knowing that they are being loved and appreciated (and often spoiled).