Roller Skating

Yesterday Leila went roller skating for the first time at a friend's birthday party. I've been super sick with a sinus thing this weekend, but she's been looking forward to this party for ages, so I made it my focus for yesterday. We got ready to leave, and the car wouldn't start. The cold is sucking juice from the battery I guess. H took care of that and then filled the car up with gas, so we had a late start. Then I couldn't find the place. I called to ask directions, and they just have a message. So finally we got there and went inside and figured out we had to find the birthday party people before we could get skates. That all took a while in the darkish roller skating rink, and I was just getting grumpier. But we finally got her skates and got them on. They were those funny beige rentals that weigh about 10 pounds. Some of the other parents were skating, but I decided discretion was the better part of valor since I wasn't feeling well, and also since a friend had badly broken her leg while skating just a few weeks ago. It was just as well as Leila needed me to give her a lot of support. So I got a workout walking around the rink with her and supporting her. By the end of the party she was doing pretty well and even went out on her own briefly. She didn't like falling down, but she wasn't afraid to walk/skate outside the rink on her own. She fell a couple of times- mostly I caught her. Once a kid skating backwards skated right into us. I told him to watch where he was going, and he didn't say anything.
After a bit there was an announcement for B---'s party to meet in party room 1, so we went over there and the kids each got a cupcake and a coke. After that we went back to skating for a while. The birthday kids got to go inside The Money Machine- that booth where money blows around and you catch as much as you can. B got 4 bucks! Soon it was time to go, and I was ready to go back to bed. Leila thought it was a great party- she got to see her friends and skate. I much prefer the kind of party where the kids really spend time with each other and play games, rather than each doing their own thing with a ton of people around. Probably if all the kids had been equal skaters they would have spent more time together, too, but some of them were skating quite well and then others were skating around with a parent the whole time. I was surprised that quite a few kids from the class showed up- last year there were only about 5 kids that showed up to birthday parties.