am i crazy?

madelyn's school sent home a flier for "no school skates" this weekend. i thought that i could take madelyn and mason (since i have at least two hands) and let them give it a try. matt has zero interest in skating and was more than happy to stay at home with a napping manning and maddux.

i thought that it was just madelyn's school, but, no, it was all of the schools in the area and there were lots of middle school kids there racing around. at least it wasn't super crowded so i was trying to stay optimistic. we got our skates (it took two tries to get the right sizes for the kids) and i got all three of us tightened and tied. i was practically sweating already!

since neither of the kids had ever been on skates, i thought the best plan was to skate up and down on the carpet several times until they got a feel for having wheels on their feet. it might have backfired on me a little because they were a little overconfident when we decided that everyone was ready to try the real thing. it took us about 3 minutes just to get all three of us onto the rink (because there was so much flailing about by the kids and i was just trying to stay upright without the use of my hands). they were a mess of limbs and falls during the 15 or 20 feet to the next opportunity to exit the rink. the surprising thing was that they wanted to try again!

no matter how much madelyn cried (more out of fear than pain), she wanted to try again. they never felt confident enough to go the whole way around the rink during the 1-1/2 or so we were there, but they got to be good enough that no one fell (mason got there much, much quicker than madelyn, but he has a lower center of gravity). madelyn said that it was much harder than she thought it would be but that she had fun and wants to try again.

it was quite a workout for me and somehow i stayed upright the entire time! there were points where i had both of them trying to climb up to standing on my legs and madelyn kept throwing her skates into my wheels when she would try to hold my hand with both of hers but i did not fall.

matt is definitely going next time! love.