Hayley hit another milestone this week - she put her shoes on all by herself! She has a pair of Velcro-strapped sandals that she’s been wearing this summer, and when we were getting ready to go outside the other day, she got them, sat in the floor, put them on the right feet, threaded the Velcro through the hooks, and tightened them up. We didn’t have to do anything!
What a big girl!
Hayley had her first ice skating class tonight, and we were so proud of her. She did extremely well for her first time and she seemed to enjoy herself.
I was worried for a second right at the beginning. She was all ready to go and the teacher just kind of let the kids go out onto the ice by themselves. Hayley stayed on her feet for about ten seconds, fell, and then couldn’t get back up. She looked like she was going to cry for a minute, but then the teacher came onto the ice and helped her up and she was fine after that. She spent plenty of time on her butt, but by the end of the class and practice skate afterward, she seemed much more comfortable. I think she actually began to fall down on purpose just so she could get up again.
A few minutes into the class, they got out the buckets–white five-gallon buckets they turn upside down and stack two- or three-high, depending on the height of the child. There were four “tots” in Hayley’s class and three of them needed to use the buckets to lean on (the fourth child seemed to be the oldest and although he fell down a lot too, he never used the bucket). They would start on one side of the rink and try to make it to the other side while holding onto their buckets. A few times, the teacher would push the bucket five to ten feet away from Hayley and make her try to “skate” to it. She did pretty well with that. The only problem with the buckets was that this one girl kept running into Hayley with hers; it was like bumper buckets.
Hayley wanted to keep skating after the class was over, so Wade went out onto the ice with her during the practice skate.
Hayley did a fabulous job and will hopefully enjoy continuing her skating class. She has seven more weeks in this semester and then we’ll see if she wants to take more classes.