In a moment of deluded grandeur I decided that my husband and I would take our daughter to the mountains and try out skiing for Family Day Weekend. Yep, Americans have President's day and (some) Canadians have Family Day. I feel that this day off in February is similar in reasoning for university "spring break" in February. The weather sucks, we probably have 2 1/2 more months of Winter left and the only motivation I have is to find the top of a really tall building to jump off of. To make matters worse, I just ended a sentence with a preposition.
Anyway, why would I feel the need to drive for three hours to take a three year old skiing? Guilt. Somedays I am okay with the fact that the only thing my daughter learned was the hot dog dance and that Mommy really, really, really wants to be left alone when she's pooping. Other days I am quite anxious about the fact that my daughter may grow up having no skills because she spent her entire youth watching TV and going grocery shopping.
For $92 I had my kiddo spend 1 hour outside on skis, either crying because her boots hurt, crying because she had fallen over while the instructor was busy with the other skiing retarded kids, or crying because her coat was zipped the wrong way. This fee also allowed my daughter to sit in the snack room crying because she just wanted to go to the daycare side and play with the dolls. All in all, a great way to spend Family Day. I cut my losses, moved her over to the daycare, found my husband and tried to put to use the snowboard boots I have worn once since buying them in 2008.
Instead of repeating the crying on Sunday we opted to do our own lessons. For the record, I have not skied since 1995.
We get on all of our gear and headed for the magic carpet-a truly genius piece of engineering. I'm sure all of you who remember your arm being torn out of the shoulder socket by the rope toe would agree with me. I was already sweating and I hadn't even gone vertical yet. We go up the carpet. The kiddo is having fun. We get off the carpet, the kiddo is not having fun. She cries. I try the mean mom approach "if you don't stop crying we are going to go home". Kiddo: "okay, let's go home". Fuck, I hate it when threats backfire. I try the understanding compassionate mom approach...ha, doesn't exist. Instead I push her across the hill and then position her between my skies and start down. All the time yelling "stand up, stand up! Lean forward, pizza, pizza, PIZZA!". We get to the bottom and she says "AGAIN!".
I can feel sweat trickling down my knees. And down my back. My touque is making my head itch so bad I want to vomit. All the other parents are staring at me because I'm not wearing a helmet. Believe me, a head injury might have been better than how I was feeling at that point. But I'm doing this for my kid. Up the magic carpet we go again. She's having fun. We get off the magic carpet, she starts crying. For the love of some god, I cannot win. We go down the hill. She laughs, and wants to go again. So we go again. And again. It now feels like we should be sitting in a bar for happy hour, but it's only 1130 am. I look at my husband. He also looks like he needs a drink and he's just been standing there taking photos for the last 2 hours.
The kiddo cries almost all the way back to the rental place. I do too.
I think TV as a bad habit is completely over-rated. Fuck outdoor activities. Next year we are going mall walking.
