"Ice skating and ice cream! Hey, that rhymes!"

For today's date day with Clara, I decided to take her ice skating.  We did it last year, which was a good start for her, and I had done it the year before with Joshua.  I thought I would do it this year with Hannah, but she didn't really seem ready for it and wasn't really interested anyway.  This is the last weekend it's open this year, so when thinking about things to do with Clara for our date day, I thought maybe she would like to go again.  We started with pizza inside Crown Center.  With any young kid, you try to take them potty a lot so they don't have to go at inopportune times.  I had taken her before we left, so I thought we'd be good for awhile.  We waited in a long line for our pizza (Crown Center on a weekend is always busy) and found a table in the commons area after a brief wait for one to become available.  We sat down to enjoy our pizza, and Clara tells me she has to go potty.  Whenever she says this, she almost always adds that she has to go "really bad" and makes this wincing, in-pain face like it's an emergency.  She's known to have a flair for the dramatic, so I think some of that is for show.  This created a dilemma for me, because we'd just sat down with our drinks and our pizzas, and we're in a public place.  I can't take our uncovered food slices into the bathroom, because that's gross, and I can't just leave our stuff there unattended.  I considered if I could just convince her to wait until we were done eating, which she probably could have done.  But if I'm wrong on that, she has pee-soaked clothes, and that kind of ruins our date day.  I noticed a nice-looking family at the table nearest ours.  It was a couple about my age with three small kids.  I figured they could sympathize with my plight, and I asked them if they could watch our food while we went to the bathroom.  I decided to evoke a little sympathy by telling them that I couldn't believe she had to go again when we had just recently gone, and I was 100% sure as a family with three small kids that they could relate.  They seemed more than happy to help me, so I took Clara to the bathroom, and then we came back and finished our pizza after I thanked them profusely.  I took a chance that we would not drop dead while ice skating because they laced our pizzas with cyanide while we were gone, and it turns out I gambled and won on that one, so it all worked out fine.

I'm pretty sure we don't need six pictures of her skating, but I've already pared these down from the roughly three billion that I originally took, so whatever.  But here she is, doing an amazing job.  I was really impressed with how much better she was compared to last year.  She was able to go around the entire rink by herself, albeit very slowly.  Sometimes I would hold her hand or hands while we skated, but I found that she would fall more often when we did that, as if she was too dependent on my hands.  When I encouraged her to go by herself, her patented determination took over, and she focused on it and could go on her own and rarely fall.  We did it for quite awhile, as she enjoyed it, even though I could tell it was physically and mentally exerting for her.

On every date day, I try to get a picture of me with the kid who's date day it is, so here are some cute pictures of me and Clara together.

Afterward we went back in Crown Center to get some ice cream.  When I told Clara of that plan, I said something like, "Okay, now we're down with ice skating, so let's go get some ice cream."  She then exclaimed, "Ice skating and ice cream!  Hey, that rhymes!"  She doesn't quite understand rhyming, but close enough.  On the way to get ice cream we had to go up an elevator.  She was very unsure of this.  She initially couldn't even bring herself to step on it (the picture on the left), leading me to have to go run back down the up escalator.  She built up her confidence, and on the second attempt, she got on, and was pretty proud of herself (the picture in the middle).  Then she liked it so much, she wanted to go up and down a couple more times (the picture on the right).  We had a lot of fun today, and I was really proud of her for improving so much at ice skating and in conquering her fear of the escalator.