The Bambinos Go Skating

Round 2 of the infamous Earning Charts.

This week it was Kyle’s turn to choose the winning activity. He chose ice skating at the indoor rink.

This is not an activity that Braydon and I enjoy (skating around and around and around an indoor skating rink), but then again, we’re not the ones with the earning charts (we’re just the ones providing the earnings!). We figured Meera would last all of 10 minutes on the ice (she had “skated” once before — when she was 2 — but she doesn’t even remember that, and she definitely is a novice skater), so we planned for Braydon to skate, and for me to wait in the wings for Miss Meera to call it quits. Meera, however, had different plans. She had earned this — well and good — and she was going to skate — just like her brothers — for the whole entire time of the rink’s Saturday Open Skating Session. Oh yeah, baby, she “skated” (i.e., poor Braydon held her up and ferried her around and around and around the rink) for the full 1.5 hours. None of the four of them took even a five minute break. I watched, rink-side, as other people’s kids all came on and off the ice — begging for hot chocolate, whining about being tired, complaining of the cold, asking to be “done!” — but not the bambinos. Oh no. They milked it for every ever-loving-minute of their hard-earned skating session. We left the rink with 3 happy kiddos and 1 very sore Papi! We are now in Week Three of the New-Year-Bedtime-Behavior-Earning-Charts. It is Meera’s turn to choose the activity. And then, hopefully, the bad bedtime habits will be broken, and this whole little earning-charts-phase will be no-longer-needed (here’s hoping!).