A couple of weeks ago we went to visit my family in Idaho. We don't get a lot of access to free baby-sitting, so I wanted to seize the opportunity to get some one-on-one time with Ellie. I get a little bit with Liv while Ellie is at preschool and Henry is napping, but I don't get much with Ellie. I thought she would love to go ice skating, since she was disappointed last month when I told her we were going to see the Disney Princesses on Ice and she took that to mean we were going to dress up as princesses and ice skate. It's a good thing the show was sufficiently spectacular to take her mind off how sad she was she didn't get to skate herself.
Well there's a rink close to my mom's house in Moscow so I bundled her up and whisked her away to try some skating.
Apparently I'm not very good at helping people anticipate what is to come, because when we got to the rink, which is just your average, run-of-the-mill, small-town ice rink used mostly for hockey and the like, she was again disappointed that a) there were no curtains and b) there were no princess dresses for us to wear. But I convinced her it would be fun anyway. We rented our skates and they gave us this plastic thing that's like a walker, but slides around on the ice for newbies to lean on and learn how to move their feet.
She LOVED it. Even though it was public skate, it was a school day and so there were only two other people on the ice, so she never had to feel rushed or crowded. Sometimes she held my hand, but mostly she really wanted to do it by herself with the skate-helper-thing. She's a very independent little thing. But when she was trying it by herself I skated around her a bit and she said I could be Tinkerbell. She was, of course, Cinderella. That's her go-to princess.
As we were skating she said, "I wish Daddy was here with us. Next time we can bring him." Steve has been traveling a lot for work. It's been harder this year than usual. The kids really miss him. It makes me both infinitely happy and infinitely sad to hear how much they love him in these little sentiments.
She was even sweeter when I tried to peel her off the ice with some bribery of hot chocolate (it was really cold and I'm a wimp). I said, "Let's get off the ice and get some hot cocoa." "Okay," she said, "and let's get some to take to Olivia, too." Melted me right on the spot.
She's such a sweetie.
The other day as I was tucking her into bed, we had the following conversation:
Ellie: "Can you snuggle me?"
Olivia: "I want you to snuggle Ellie-Belle."
Ellie: (while we're snuggling) "When you want to leave just say you want to go and I will say, 'No, don't go yet!'"
I hope she always says that.
I'm really looking forward to this holiday season with her this year. She is so imaginative. Her whole world is bright and full of magic. It's a pretty fun thing to be a part of.
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