Adventures in Rollerskating

Vinny was invited to a 7-year-old's rollerskating birthday party, and we all attended it today. I had told him last night that in the morning, we were going to need to take a bath and then we would go rollerskating. He's never skated but he knew what rollerskating was because there's an episode of Oswald where Oswald learns to roller skate.

He was really excited about the idea of rollerskating, and in fact this morning he remembered that today we were going rollerskating! After a relatively short bath, we headed out to the roller rink.

We got Vinny a pair of skates, and Jeff and I remained in our shoes and helped him around the rink. At first he could hardly keep his feet under himself, but as his time on skates progressed, he improved dramatically. He couldn't really skate without assistance, but he wasn't falling flat on his behind. And in fact, he was able to get up from sitting and balance himself for a short time before he got too wobbly.

One thing that did not help his roller skating was all the cool blinking lights up on the ceiling, which were much more interesting to look at than the rink. At first he was just skating while looking straight up, but eventually we were able to get him to look ahead of him instead, which dramatically improved his skating.

This evening when I tucked Vinny into bed, he asked me if we could go rollerskating tomorrow. Evidently it was a big hit with him!