Laugh AT Your Kids

Sometimes you just have to laugh at your kids.

Even if the other moms in the room look at you like you are committing some form of mild child abuse. The kids are funny.

And they look funny when they fall on their butts on the ice on their first day of ice skating. They look even funnier covered in ice from falling over and over again. They look silly when they are sprawled out face first (with helmets, thank you very much) in the middle of the rink.

I am not a mean mother. I am actually quite nurturing. But this was hysterical.

And you want to know something? Because I was over there laughing with tears running down my face from the sheer joy of watching my kids fall over and over again ... they were laughing too. They weren't crawling over to the side asking me to quit. They weren't sitting on the ice crying - not from pain - but from frustration. They were laughing at themselves and getting up and trying again.

Ice skating is not something that comes naturally to two boys who grew up in Texas. We don't even have icy streets, much less rinks covered in ice. There are one or two indoor rinks, but we play baseball and football. We just don't ice skate, except on Christmas holidays.

That changed yesterday, J and M did skate. And they did it with conviction. They - quite literally - threw themselves into their lessons. They ended up beaten and bruised. But they were laughing the whole time.

I can't wait until next week.