Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Skating Success


Today Claire had a complete attitude change on ice skating. She was enthusiastic about her lesson, smiled during the class, and then during our three hours of "open skate" this afternoon she really took to it. While she lagged behind during class (see photo today), during open skate when I skated with her she worked hard to go fast and wasn't at all afraid of falling down. She's learned to get up quickly by herself, and she even made at least one full lap on the rink without falling at all. I was actually very impressed by her progress in one day. While I expected today would be better, I was surprised by how much better it went.

We returned home by about 3:30 so I felt like I got to see the twins today too. They are getting far more interesting by the day. Molly shakes her head "yes" or "no" to answer my questions, and does her best to use her limited vocabulary to communicate. For example, tonight I said, "is Lily sitting in the chair?" to which Molly shook her head yes (which was correct). I ask if she wants specific things, and sometimes she says yes and sometimes no, so I know I'm getting relatively valid answers if I'm getting a mix of both yes and no. Lily is working hard at pointing and by default asking what something is so that she begins to learn more words. I tested her comprehension at snack time with "Lily, put down the cookie before you pick up the milk cup" and she actually followed my direction, so she might be understanding more than I've been giving her credit for. Mind you, the "cookie" was a Vanilla Wafer, but for ease of comprehension I lump in all those types of things under the word cookie.

OK, I'm off to check if Claire falls asleep quickly. One would imagine that 3 1/2 hours of ice skating would exhaust a 4-year-old but Claire can confound even the best guessers sometimes.

Tomorrow night, Christmas Eve, ought to be crazy here!

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