In which we go ice skating

Saturday at the library we ran into both the Avigads and the Gelmans, who had also come for the magic show. Elinor mentioned that their youngest daughter had been invited to a birthday party at the ice skating rink on Wednesday, and that she and her two older daughters were going to stay and skate because they were all going to have to go there anyway. She wanted to know whether or not I would be interested in bringing my kids to go skating with them.

Now ice skating isn't a hugely big thing in Kansas, and so my kids had never been ice skating, and I wasn't at all sure how they would fare out on the ice. On the other hand, Sapphire had been begging to go ice skating ever since she discovered that Fontenay has an ice skating rink, and I'd been putting her off on the grounds that it's expensive and I wasn't sure how I could get three kids started on skates all at the same time, particularly since I've yet to go skating and not come back with purple knees afterwards.

When I asked Sapphire whether or not she would like to go, she was ecstatic, and so on Tuesday afternoon I called Elinor and said we would go. Fortunately, her kids all knew how to ice skate, and she was sure they would be willing to help my kids out, at least a little bit.

The ice skating rink that was hosting the birthday party was in a suburb on the other side of Paris, so it took us the better part of an hour to get there. Then we got to wait in line to pay our admission fee and to rent our skates: size 25 for Cherry, 31 for Ezio, 34 for Sapphire, and 38 for me. (Maybe now that I've written them down I'll be able to remember what they are!) Putting them all on and making sure they were properly (tightly) laced up took another 15 minutes, since none of the kids could do their own, and they we tottered out to the rink.

Sapphire and Ezio immediately headed out onto the ice with Jordana, and promptly landed on their butts. And stood up and landed on their butts. And stood up and landed on their knees. You get the picture. I think Sapphire was about ready to give up and go home right then. (I don't think that she believed me when I told her that learning to ice skate was hard, and that she would fall a lot at first.) Meanwhile I was trying to keep Cherry upright without falling over myself, and so I wasn't in a very good position to help them (and Jordana isn't really big enough to pull kids up). Eventually Ezio managed to crawl over to the wall and pulled himself up and somehow managed to make it to the nearest exit and off the ice. Sapphire followed him.

Now that they were off the ice (and off their butts) we needed a better way to proceed. What if they got onto the ice at one door, and then off at the next and walked back around to the first door and repeated that, at least until they felt more comfortable on their skates? That way they wouldn't have to commit to going all the way around the rink, and they could stay along a part of the wall that was easy to hold onto. Eventually they got braver and first Ezio and then Sapphire ventured to attempt to circle the whole rink.

By the end, Ezio was sort of skate walking around the entire rink without falling down. Sapphire was falling down more, but she was also doing something a bit closer to regular skating. And Cherry was skating for short distances without holding my hand. (She was a big hit with the watching grandparents, especially when she started skating without holding my hand. There were lots of primary school kids there, but not so many preschoolers.) The kids were also soaked from all their falls onto the ice, and sporting bruises in many places. Sapphire was getting a blister on one heel. It was time to take off the skates and get our shoes back on and head back to the train station.