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Monday, June 28, 2010

Her Middle Name Should Have Been Grace

Let me start off by saying the only thing I regret about this whole episode is that I didn't bring my camera. On Saturday The Man and I were debating something to do with the girls. He didn't want to go swimming because I have a severe dislike of public swimming pools and won't get in them; therefore no help from Kat. I didn't want to go bowling. So we ended up taking the girls roller skating at the roller rink on the base.

Now let's set this scene. I haven't been on a pair of roller skates (4 wheeled variety, not rollerblades) in about 10 years, give or take. My husband hasn't been on rollerblades in roughly the same amount of time. My kids have never gone roller skating ever. Needless to say, you know it is going to be an interesting time; i.e. blog worthy material.

We got our skates and found a bench where we could sit to lace them up. I pulled all of our socks out of the black hole of doom (my handbag) and distributed them. KiKi got laced up. I noticed for safety sake the roller rink had tightened the wheels on her skates to the point that they barely would roll. Then we got LaLa laced up. She was not so lucky on the wheel front. He wheels rolled like they had just been freshly oiled that morning. Well, they would have rolled like that if she could have gotten off the floor.

I took off with KiKi expecting that she would be the one who would need the most help. I was wrong, she took to her semi-non-rolling skates like a duck to water. Then I glanced at LaLa. LaLa was holding onto the padded edge of the rink for dear life in a roller skate induced split. The Man helped her right herself. Step step fall. The Man helps her up. Step step split. Helped up. Step crash.

"LaLa take smaller steps. Don't pretend you're in your socks on the hardwood floors. This is a little different than that, Babe," I said as I skated up to her.

She skated for a minute. Splits. I helped her up. She skated for another minute then down on her butt. At this point I am just shaking my head (and trying not to laugh). After twenty minutes of watching her flounder on the floor I told La I was going to do a fast lap and come back to her. I did my lap and came back to her; she was still flailing along the edges of the rink about ten feet from where I left her. "Are you having fun or do you want to go try something else?" She said she was having fun so I was still game.

I did another lap and found The Man helping KiKi. I asked him to trade kids with me because I didn't know how else to help LaLa. I might have also said something about how we may have the most uncoordinated child I have ever seen. After 2 hours of roller skating fun, LaLa had progressed to the point where she could stay up for about 3 minutes and not fall. In her case I count that as a win.