Something New Every Day.

Elizabeth Beans is turning into a real grown up girl more and more before my eyes. She's a little kid now! Not a toddler or a baby! And it seems like every week, she's got something new going on.

All of this watching of the Winter Olympics has me thinking about winter sports, and how different it is growing up in California versus growing up on the East Coast. Tim and I went ice skating once when we were first dating, and he said he would be fine because he'd rollerbladed as a kid. Yeah. He needed me to hold his hand around the rink (and not just for mushy hand holding reasons) and then he went down like a ton of bricks and nearly broke his arm. He refuses to get back on ice skates. Whereas I grew up across the street from a little vernal pool that would freeze over during the winter and provide a spot for decent ice skating every day after school. We have no such frozen pond across the street from our house now, so I decided to take Ellie to a nearby ice rink to see what she thought. She was very excited about the idea, even if it meant she missed out on Tuesdays with Mimi (Mimi got some snuggling in with Adam while we were gone.)

It was pretty fun. She was happy to put on the skates, and we got out on the ice, with me trying to keep her up right for half a lap of the ice. She is heavy, and I realized she wasn't learning how to balance, just hanging on me. So I went and got her a bunch of Home Depot buckets that they had for kids to push around the ice. And ugh, it was tough. I spent another lap (which took ten minutes) skating back wards and pulling the bucket forward, as she just slid along behind, sobbing and saying she hated it any time that she fell. But by the end of a half hour or so, this happened:

She lasted a total of maybe 45 minutes on the ice, smiling when skating was going well, sobbing any time she hit the deck. Still, it was really fun! I forgot how great ice skating is. Perhaps I will have to get Tim up to speed so we can do some couples skating. Or I can just skate actual circles around him.

Her other latest talent is FINALLY being able to pedal her big wheel. We've started letting her ride in the street of Gigi's culdesac (with supervision, obviously) and for the longest time, she'd be happy to ride down from their house, but then get lazy when she had to pedal against the small incline back towards the house. Any sort of out door cycling resulted in one of us walking behind her big wheel, giving her a push every ten steps. Now, she's got it! Pedaling around like a mad woman, and enjoying having Adam in the car car next to her (we do sometimes use the car car to give her a shove.)

This video was supposed to be capturing how excited he gets about being in a street gang with her. He was bouncing up and down and shouting with baby joy. Until I got the camera out, obviously.