These skates were made for walking...

Here Tobias ensures me that he can tie his own laces all by himself.

Tobias had a season of soccer last summer. Well, .. a season if you can call "2 practices and 1 game" a season. After that the whining and refusal made our wills as parents falter. The few times we did attend practice he would run behind everyone else (if anyone has experienced little league soccer you've noticed that wherever the ball is that's where you'll find ALL the players) and would occasionally stop and sit in the grass to play. This worried me as I'm not the most athletically inclined.. and I was hoping that at least in this situation my boy wouldn't necessarily follow in daddy's footsteps.

Then came a year of piano. Well, if you can call "the piano teacher cashing 3 post-dated cheques and tossing 8 more that were cancelled" a year. Again, the whining whittled down our will for a concert pianist.. or at least a kid with some musical chops. Personally I may not always have liked doing things that took patience and practice. As before I worried as this was a trait of mine that maybe my son should be without.

Well, along came skating. When we told our kids that we were going to go skating for the first time they got all excited. I'm not sure exactly why. I'm not sure if they even knew why.. or even if they knew exactly what skating was. On the way home after a 1/2 hour of back-breaking- bending-down-trying-to-pick- and-hold-up what seemed like jellyfish-on-ice I was pleasantly surprised to find out that both kids loved the experience and wanted to go again.

Tobias started parks'n'rec skating lessons a couple of weeks ago and even though he may not be the fastest (by far) and falls quite a bit he still loves it! wow. I'm not sure why he does.. but I'm glad. The whole time we are there I'm by the boards, grining ear to ear like a creepy human version of the chesire cat while cringing slightly every time tobias falls and takes a hard whack on his tush. Proud that he keeps trying and glad that he enjoys doing it. Do I see a Maple Leafs jersey in his future? Maybe not. But I do see how in some things he may be a bit different then me.... and I couldn't be happier.

Parents aren't aloud to take photos/videos (I'm not entirely sure why). So I was trying to be discreet. I didn't want to be the 'jackass dad who knows you're not supposed to take video but he's standing right there sneaking a video and it's obvious he's doing it' even though that's .. exactly.... ahem.. what I was doing...