Skating. Take Two.

When Lucas was about 3 1/2 years old we signed him up for skating lessons.  Lucas has always been extremely athletic and very co-ordinated, even when he was really little.  He had done Little Gym and ballet and enjoyed most sports that we tried out at home.  So we figured skating was a good next step during the winter.

Wrong.

Can you say deer in the headlights?

Lucas was not a great skater.  He is a perfectionist and if Lucas can't do something fairly quickly he becomes frustrated with himself and is very hard on himself.  We stuck it out for all the lessons but he didn't progress a ton.  Jason and I were picking straws on who had to take him each week because it was an exercise in back-breaking for us.  We called Lucas spaghetti-man because he would just go limp on to the ice or in our arms because he couldn't figure out how to stay up and that was so upsetting to him.

This is where alot of his time was spent.  My poor little guy.

By the end of the lessons he was able to stand up and even skate for some distance.  But it was a realization for us that he was in fact still little and that we tried this venture a little too early for him.
But he was very proud of himself and he really had come very far.  We were proud too!

So flash forward four years.  Yes four.  He had not been on skates since.  We were kind of nervous to get him to try but his friends are skating now and there is lots of talk of hockey.  So we signed him up and he had his first lesson this weekend.  This time the parents are not on the ice.

He tried so hard, but it was like his first time on the ice because it had been so long.  He was spaghetti-man 20 minutes in and I could just feel his frustration.  He was having trouble standing and he didn't know how to stop once he got going.  I was a really bad mother and I was laughing quite hard watching all these poor kids falling over and over.  But man it was quite the comedy, it was like watching bowling pins going down.

But then he got it.  He is awesome and he persevered.

He was placed in a group of 3 kids at the 20 minute point and something just clicked with the new instructor and he was doing it.  He was able to stand up for much longer and he could get to the pylon they had to skate to pretty quick.  By the end she had him doing little turns.  I was so proud of him for sticking with it and I think that he will really catch on well over the next few weeks.

My superstar :)