Ice skating was hysterical, absolutely hysterical. Claire fired "I despise you for doing this to me" looks from the ice as she fell down or wouldn't do anything at all, too afraid of falling again. I laughed the whole time except for when she was looking at me. Kyle appeared later to watch the spectacle, and Claire perked up at the sight of him, but continued to give us dirty looks. Then she wouldn't talk to us for a while afterwards. My guess is the perfectionist part of her can't handle the falling or the inability to skate - it feels like failure to her - so I think it's wonderful she gets to experience this. A feisty personality like hers needs to feel unbalanced (no pun intended) every once in a while. It's healthy for her self esteem and development. So I couldn't help but laugh, because other than the falling being funny, I know this is a good experience for her in the long run. My own personal triumphs come from experiences like this.
And because Claire didn't want to move on the ice, she basically got one-on-one instruction from the teacher who recruited a second girl to help so one of them could focus on Claire. However, I also think I did a poor job of dressing her - the jeans restricted her movement too much - so tomorrow we've got a great outfit picked out for the second lesson (assuming I can drag her there) and I'm hoping it will go better. We're also meeting friends in the afternoon for an "open skate" period, and I'm hoping the fun of being with her friends on the ice will increase her excitement about skating. I'm even going to join her on the ice. I skate horribly, so I told her I'd prove that it's a tough thing to do and not even all adults can do it.
After the morning skate, Claire and I had a big mother/daughter day. After a quick trip to the DMV (whoops, we were overdue on car tag renewal for the new minivan), we had lunch at Waffle House where Claire got the usual special treatment. We then headed over to the parks & rec place to meet friends for two hours of "open gym" play time, where the kids ran wild and burned off cabin fever energy. Claire and I then had an indulgent snack at a bakery, picked up her pottery class tiger (which looks fantastic!), and ran by Target to buy her better gloves for skating class tomorrow. So that was 7 straight hours of me/Claire time today and I enjoyed the day. The twins were home with the nanny and I've got the same childcare lined up for tomorrow so we can have a repeat mom/Claire day.
And to add to my fun for the day, I got to see Molly take her first (not very tentative) steps! I was lying on the floor with her, and she was sitting on my stomach as if I were her chair, and she suddenly stood up and took three steps toward Claire. I then got her to repeat the move a couple more times so Kyle would believe me. Yeah Molly! I am feeling so lucky that I witnessed all three kids' first steps. It's a very exciting moment for me to see the concept click in their little heads.
The twins are already asleep for the night (I barely saw them today, which does make me sad) and Claire should fall asleep the minute her head hits the pillow. The goal is to have her exhausted by bedtime every day this week so she sleeps on track and she's not up until 11pm on Christmas Eve. We've had too many late nights and late mornings recently.
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