Ice Skating with Kiera

Look who I got out on skates.

I never would have thought the child of mine who was born in a semi-tropical region of the world would be the first of my children to try ice skating.  The others showed scant interest at best.  But Kiera?  I told her she'd have to wear her snow pants if she wanted to go ice skating with me and when I came downstairs, she was nearly dressed and ready to go.

Kiera was so excited when we headed out the door, which is funny, because she had no idea what ice skating was.  She looked at me with slight discomfort as I tried to cram her feet into the skates and then was in for quite a shock when I plunked her down on the rink with two metal blades strapped to her feet.

I hunched over and hooked my arms under hers and helped her glide her feet across the ice.  She didn't seem to understand that she needed to put weight on her feet and instead leaned back into my arms. I was exhausted after one lap around the rink.  A friend had met us at the rink, and she skated over and took one of Kiera's arms while I firmly grasped the other.  Kiera was forced to put weight on her feet, but had enough support from us to stay upright.  Eventually Kiera was confident enough to toddle along with just one of his grasping her arm.

This all might have seemed like modest progress, but to me it was huge. It's unfortunately easy for Kiera to get overlooked next to her loud, physical and rambunctious brothers.  Here she was doing her own thing and when you're only three and a half years old, toddling along on skates is something to brag about. More importantly, she and I were having fun together.  Every time I asked her if she was having fun, she smiled and if I asked her if she wanted to keep skating, she nodded her head yes. 

Kiera wanted to pose with the statues of the Peanuts characters.