Skating lessons

Ashton started skating lessons this week. He is a tough kid to do anything with because if he doesn't feel like doing it at that moment, he is rather difficult to deal with. I'm always nervous about signing him up for things like this because it's a lot of money if he desides he isn't going to do it.

Tuesday went ok, but after about 15 minutes, he came off the ice crying. This didn't surprise me as that's is what he always does when we take him. He said his feet hurt. We begin to think maybe his skates are too small. We bought them last year and not thinking that if he grew 3 inches this year, maybe his feet grew too. On top of that, Jason had put socks that were too thick on him and tied the skates too tight. I loosened his laces and sent him back out. He made it through the rest of the lesson and we bought him a slurpee.

Thursday, he said he decided he didn't want to go, he would rather go the next day. How do you explain to a 4 year old that things are scheduled and I have no control over when they are on! We finally convinced him to go. Bribery works great. We asked him what he wanted for a treat if he stayed on the ice the whole time, he said a sucker. Easy enough. We had planned to look for new skates for him but didn't have time on Wednesday so I put thinner socks on him. He was doing great, then he fell, I think he landed on the same bruise on his knee that he'd gotten the previous time and he tried to come off the ice. The coach brought him to the door and I convinced him to stay on longer. He stayed out the rest of the time. I was so proud of him! He had a big smile on his face the whole time. He made such progress even from the last day. He is able to get up on his own now, he walked in a circle (like a spin) bending over picking stuff up, all things he couldn't do before. He hardly even fell down.

I hope that he'll be excited to go now. This is why I had kids, to be able to go out and do things like this. Might even have to get back into the coaching next year.