Our first chunk of time was Saturday evening while Elliot had his curling match. We had a birthday party for one of Ada's friends earlier that day and I wasn't sure if she would even be awake for all of the time at the rink. Ada being Ada, she remembered all of our planning and refused to take a nap - she didn't want to miss a thing!
Now, normally a no nap day results in a cranky Ada right around the time the curling match was set to start so there was a part of me that was dreading the alone time just a bit. But we had a plan, and there is lots of sugar for purchase at the rink so I told myself to let go of the fear, embrace my inner four year old and have at it.
We started the night off with a casual loop around the rink (Ada on skates, me in my curling shoes), with a quick break in the penalty box.
Next we moved on to the vending machine portion of the night. Normally Ada will pick some stickers she wants, or a plastic ring, but this time she went for the claw machines. You know the ones that are impossible to ever win. Well as luck would have it one of the machines had a 'guaranteed to win' feature so we started out with that and got a nice red ball.
We played around with the ball for awhile and then decided it was time for hot chocolate, only, once we got into the snack bar area Ada spotted the Dippin' Dots machine and immediately changed her order to ice cream instead of hot chocolate. To me the two are at opposite ends of the food spectrum but hey, to a four year old I can see how ice cream would trump everything even if I was already freezing.
After making her way through the ice cream Ada decided that I was good enough at the claw game that I could up my difficulty level to one that is not guaranteed to win. The one with the cooler stuffed animal prizes. I had enough quarters for one try. I failed. Then I realized the machine took dollar bills and after about 3 more attempts, we got a cross between a bear and a cow, we call him, "Moooo, I'm a bear". You would have thought Ada found a pot of gold she was so excited about this little bear cow.
Basking in the glow of our victory we went back to the bench to 'take a rest'. Ada was finally starting to admit that she was getting tired. ONLY on our way there she noticed that one of the little vending machines sold stick on mustaches. Of course we had to have one of those. (??) So with our last remaining quarter, we became the proud owners of one adhesive black fuzzy mustache. It was awesome.
The mustache entertained us for a little while on the bench, but in that excitement Ada forgot she was tired. So we told stories, we pulled up the Cha Cha Slide on YouTube on my phone and danced a little bit, we (gasp) watched some of Elliot's curling match, and when we had made sure we had fully annoyed the mother of one of Elliot's fellow curlers (a sure member of the USA 2014 women's team) I decided it was time to run around a little bit.
And run we did. We did a series of about 20, 100 meter races around the end of rink. First Ada insisted on beating me every time, then we went to tying every race. I will give it to her, Ada is really starting to pick up some speed.. she was running so fast that she garnered the interest of a gaggle of three older kids (probably 10 - 12 years old) playing around the rink. So much so that they started to follow us in our races, and finally joining in. Once Ada figured out she had some fans she decided to 'take a break with these guys' and invited herself into their games.
Being the cool mom that I am I stood a safe distance away from the kids so I wasn't hovering, but was also close enough to jump in if it seemed like the play was getting out of the 'safe for a four year old' territory. Ada handled herself wonderfully, she held her own while playing, stayed out of the fights, and didn't try to do anything she didn't feel like she could do.
Let's just hope this wisdom sticks with her through the years.
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