Statue of Crazy Horse, scaled down version of the under-construction Crazy Horse Monument

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Been heading out daily to do photo walks. The idea is to just get out and see what’s around me, and look for shots.

Today, we headed out for the walk and I realized 20 minutes in that I forgot to put the memory card into my camera. Luckily, I have brought my phone along, and was still able to get some interesting shots.

This was of a door at the restrooms of a local a park. The green paint stuck out, so I dragged out my trusty Epic 4G and snapped a shot!

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Carolyn has always had a fondness for all things ocean. Her last bedroom had a huge undersea mural. She loves the idea of mermaids, loves Shark Reef in Las Vegas and the Aquarium of the Pacific. She really loves Sea World.

This weekend, I remembered that there was a park in Garden Grove named Atlantis (Atlantis Play Park to be exact). As kids, we used to go there for birthday parties. I looked it up online, and sure enough, it was still there! So I thought this would be a fun place to take Carolyn.

The different play areas are all marine themed, with a sea serpent slide, dolphin and whale rocking horses and a shark kids can climb on. There’s even a whale-shaped slide.

Carolyn decided, for some reason, that the whale’s teeth needed cleaning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqnYwITI-NE

If you’re in Orange County, and you have young kids (younger than say 11 or 12), this is a great place. It is enclosed, requires a $1 admission per person. It is beautifully landscaped, has all kinds of places kids can play and imagine in. It’s off of Westminster Blvd, just east of Magnolia, right up against the 22 freeway. If you’re looking to throw a birthday party, you can actually reserve space for tables, and they actually have a specific, closed-off birthday pavilion with a King Neptune throne for the birthday kid.

One little gem in there that I had never noticed as a kid is a small rose garden. Perhaps it wasn’t there when I was younger, or perhaps we were too busy chasing each other around that we didn’t notice. But there were some nice roses in bloom today. The trees there are all mature, strong specimens, absolutely beautiful.

After that, we headed to Buffalo Wild Wings for some lunch. The evidence is below. Carolyn can’t seem to eat anything with sauce without adorning half her face with it…

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This is the stuff at the top of the bar at Trader Sam’s. Think Enchanted Tiki Room meets Jungle Cruise, with a fully stocked bar…

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This image was taken at the Mt. Rushmore Monument’s museum. It is of a plaster study done by the builders of the monument, created to scale, so that they had a model to work from.

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My daughter worked hard the last few months of the school year to improve her behavior. One of the incentives for good behavior was that she could earn money to do to whatever she liked. She chose ice skating lessons.

Now, before we go any further, you need to know a couple of things about my kid. First, she’s not terribly coordinated when it comes to gross motor skills. She can draw and do things that required superb hand-eye coordination on the level of fine motor skills. But when it comes to more physical stuff, my description is that she can trip over a painted line. She got this from me. When I was her age, I was a klutz. I once ran through the screen on a sliding glass door because I was just going too fast for my own good. Crashed my bike innumerable times. I was a disaster waiting to happen. So I understand where it comes from and really hope she grows out of it quicker than I did.

“You’re gonna fall. A lot. And that’s ok.”

The other thing you need to know is that she is a gifted child, with some tendencies of Asperger’s Syndrome. This presents some unique problems. First, academic stuff comes easy to her. Very easy. She burns through books, has a vocabulary far beyond her peers and does well in math as well. They all come easy to her. Which is why physical activities are a problem. They don’t come easy. In fact, they’re very difficult for her. She has trouble with spatial boundaries, and still confuses right and left. All of which make for a harder time learning physical activities than the average kid.

She, however, is used to things coming easy to her. And that’s a problem. Ice skating was not going to come easy to her. So, as soon as she made the decision that she wanted to learn to skate, her grandparents and I started prepping her.

“You’re gonna fall. A lot. And that’s ok.”

“The ice is hard and cold, and when you fall, it might hurt a bit.”

“If you sign up for this, you need to go the whole set of lessons.”

“You have to keep working at it. The only way you’ll get better is with practice.”

This went on for about 4 months. And then, the last week of school, she hit the mark for earning the skating lessons. I signed her up, with the constant fear in the back of my mind that she was gonna fall a bunch the first day and not want to go back – and that I would be dragging my kid to lessons for about 10 weeks.

Now imagine, however, in her mind how it was going to go. She got her skates on and made her grandmother walk into the pro shop so they could look at skates and dresses and gloves and… you get the picture. I had to rein her in a bit (just as Nana was telling her she’d buy her these things) and remind her that she hadn’t taken the first class yet.  She had already decided that she was going to step onto the ice and skate away into a double Axel.

Reality came a-callin’ five minutes later when she stepped onto the ice. She got about ten feet before ending on her keester. As I expected, she was having a much harder time than all but two of the kids. Luckily, one was considerably older, so the whole idea that the younger kids were beating her was a non-issue. But she expected it to be easy. And it wasn’t.

They ended up getting her a stack of five-gallon buckets to lean on, and to help her get around the ice for the first lesson. This didn’t keep her from falling, including one particularly nasty looking fall where her head went back and thunked on the ice. We joked with her that we didn’t know which was harder, the ice or her noggin – which got her to laughing about it rather than crying. But when the lesson was over, she was ready to go.

We joked with her that we didn’t know which was harder, the ice or her noggin

It hadn’t gone well, but we discussed it. And I reminded her that everything that I and her grandparents had told her would happen did in fact happen. We didn’t sugar-coat it, and her falling nearly a dozen times in half an hour was expected. And that she did great anyway.

Still, when the time came for her to hit the ice for the second lesson today, I had a hunch it wasn’t going to be easy. Sure enough, she didn’t want to go. It took coaxing, cajoling and some sterner “Get out there”s from dear old dad to get her out. She was shaky, and they brought her the stack of buckets again and she pushed them around. A little faster this time, still a bit shaky, but better. And she wasn’t falling.

Then the instructor challenged her a little. He put his hand on the stack of buckets, had her stand straight, then moved the buckets away from her and had her skate to them. After a couple of times of doing this, as she skated he kept moving them, making her go farther and farther. She fell once (the only time during this session) and before the class was over, made it most  of the way across the ice without the help of the buckets. Wobbly, timidly, but on her own.

When the class was nearly over, she looked at me through the glass and was visibly upset. The shakiness was uncomfortable. She wasn’t sure of herself and that was scaring her. She asked when we would go home. I was afraid of this happening, her getting too uncomfortable and wanting to quit. When she made her way off the ice, I asked her if she wanted to stay for the free skate practice session. At first she said she just wanted to go home, but changed her mind and said she’d do the practice session if I would get on the ice as well.

I grabbed a pair of skates and we hit the ice. For the next hour, I skated backward while having her skate to me, first along the wall, then a little farther away and finally far enough that it wasn’t a safety net. And she kept trying. She wanted to quit a few times, but we worked on keeping balance, on gliding, on taking easy steps. We skated one lap side by side, with me doing most of the “skating” and her mostly gliding – but she was feeling more stable on her skates.

She fell a few times, and I let her get up, get stable, and we kept going. The final lap, she made it all the way around, on her own power, with minimal help and very little going for the wall as support. We even nicknamed it the evil wall, because every time she reached for it, she ended up on her tuchis.

I told her over and over how awesome she was doing and we talked about it afterwards. I reminded her how it got easier with every step, and that I was very, very proud of her for sticking to it. The rink is closed next week for ice maintenance, but she wants to go to a different rink to practice.

So I get discouraged. I wonder why I keep doing it. I wonder if it’s worth the time.

The whole day got me to thinking about what “sticking to it” means. I’ve been online for at least 25 years. I’ve had my own domains for nearly twenty. I’ve been blogging, on and off, for about ten of those years.

And it’s that on and off part that meets the “Stick to it” part. I’ve struggled with consistency in my writing. A big part of that is that I have a small audience, and it hasn’t grown appreciably as time has passed. So I get discouraged. I wonder why I keep doing it. I wonder if it’s worth the time.

And then, I realize what I told my daughter – it’s going to be hard, you’re going to fall, it’s going to hurt. She didn’t fall far from the tree when it comes to expecting things to come easily. I get how to do it, and get discouraged when the results don’t match the picture I painted in my head.

My blogs haven’t grown because I haven’t put in enough time, enough effort. I haven’t done those things that need to be done for it to grow. Haven’t promoted them, haven’t been prolific enough, haven’t written enough.

I need to stick to it. I need to heed the same advice I give my daughter.

Sometimes, we need to learn the same lessons we teach our kids.

P.S. How do you keep your kids from getting discouraged? How do you keep yourself from getting discouraged? Let me know in the comments!

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You can buy this image as a poster or print!
Sidewalk Blossom by Leo Soderman

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Taken between Upton and Newcastle, WY on 1/13/08. It was cold, clear, and beautiful.

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Queen Mary At Dusk – Purchase this photo as a poster or print! More by Leo Soderman

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