The Kid Can Skate! The 2016 Spring Ice Show

Y'all, I have been SO. SICK.

Like, seriously, SO sick. The kind of sick that makes you rethink your life choices. The kind of sick that you can't even really explain to people even after you feel better, on account of the tale is too horrifying.

I am going to be traumatized for a long time by how sick I was, but I'll just tell you that I got sick on a Friday, and I did not feel better until I woke up on a Monday TEN DAYS LATER. This year's flu is no joke, my Friends.

It's a little funny, though, because I made no secret that February was a stressful month for me. I complained all the time about cookie selling and Syd's fashion show garment and all the big etsy orders that I kept getting because I refused to close my shop while I was so busy. Is it really any wonder, then, that I got laid flat by a virus? Oh, and I somehow, probably at a cookie booth, managed to catch hand, foot, and mouth disease, as well, so that happened.

Anyway, on the last day that I still felt really unwell, I nevertheless put on a bra AND a pair of button-waisted pants--my first in over a week!--and was bundled off to the ice arena, to watch this amazing kid of mine show off another season of ice skating instruction.

Rehearsals for this particular performance had been a little shaky, as the show runner had made both the dicey decision to have the kids skate to a hee-haw sounding country song AND to have them wear their pajamas while doing it. A few of the skaters were too young to take offence, but those who were well ensconced in the tween demographic, my own skater included, were not best pleased. I'm told that one child actually defected to skate in a younger level's performance instead.

Nevertheless, my own kid sucked it up and put on her wolf pajamas, and when, once we'd gotten there, I voiced the sudden panicked thought that perhaps all the other children had revolted and my kid would be the only one in jammies, Will assured me that she'd seen one of the other kids in her group already, and she was rocking a pair of cheetah-print jammies.

Thank you, Cheetah Jammies!

Here, then, are all the kids, rocking their jammies and their hee-haw song and showing off their awesome skating skills:


During the first half of the show, a little tot skater finished her performance, then somehow escaped her teacher (I would NOT have been pleased if it had been my kid) and managed to march her way all the way around the rink in her little tot skates and over to her mother in the bleachers. Her mother was sitting next to me, so I lifted the kid up to her, but I couldn't help both asking the kid, "Does your teacher know where you are?" and telling the mother, "They're going to want her for the finale." The kid stayed in the bleachers, however, and sure enough, during the finale, when all her little classmates marched and shuffled and were tugged out for their final bow, the kid began to wail. The mother said to me, in a break from comforting her kid and ceaselessly explaining to her that it was too late to go join her group on the ice, "I think you've done this before!"

And that's when it hit me: yeah, I have. Will's such a low-key kid about her activities that it can be hard to realize, sometimes, that yes, this kid has been skating every winter since 2008. She's been riding since 2013, and actually has her first Pony Club test, for the D-1 level, later today. Back in 2010, when she was holding her peaceful protest against Sport Shorties, I don't know if I believed that this kid would ever find one sport to call her own, much less two.

And I haven't even told you about the mother/daughter fencing that we've been doing all fall and winter. Another time!

2015 Spring Ice Show: Momma's Little Gangsta

Once upon a time, I had a little tot in pink snowpants (and also one in a blue stocking cap who keeps falling on her booty):


 Five years later, I have a big kid in a blue tie-dyed T-shirt (which I have just remembered that I still need to return to the friend from whom I borrowed it--sorry, Tris!!!), skating to "Gangsta Blues" from Slumdog Millionaire:

An aside--I originally misread the title of the song in the parents' email, and from then on I could not get out of my head how much MORE awesome it would be if the kids were actually skating to "Gangsta's Paradise," as I'd originally thought.

Although Will is happy to rest on her laurels at this season's end--

I am told that next season she would like to both sign up for the figure skating club and perhaps try hockey. If this is the case, I'll be one of those parents with the permanent seat in the lobby, schoolwork spread everywhere, a full dinner on the cafe table.