Things that make you go, Hm.

Saturday, evaluation day. Usually Stitch is anxious and irritable on evaluation days, but today he was cheerful and rambunctious. We got to the rink early since Coach was feeling bad about shorting him ten minutes on the last lesson, and was making it up to him today. This is fine, since ten minutes usually morphs into twenty.

Stitch was running and jumping rope and laughing and playing, I sent him on the ice and he was mock dragging his skates when I told him to stroke around and warm up. Coach took him and they got to work on that dratted change foot spin. Again, if it hangs him up for awhile, this is fine by me so we can solidify everything else under it.

True to form, the "ten minutes" was actually a lot longer, and the Tot classes got treated to the tail end of Stitch's lesson before he darted out for Moves. Coach told me that Wednesday would be both boys, and this made me happy.

I watched for awhile, but then got cold so I started wandering the lobby. I got a table set up to start measuring kids for Winter Show and set to work. I'd done some of this on Wednesday night, too, and it's fun. The parents are all full of questions about rehearsals and how many shows do they have to be in and what kind of costume will it be and so on. I answered as best I could, told them that the costumes are usually just fine and everyone ends up looking cute.

"She's got pink skates, do we need white skate covers?"
"What level is she in?"
"Tots."
"I wouldn't sweat it. Ask the coach to be sure, but don't worry about it right now."
"What do they do in the tot number?"
"Make you weep with cuteness. I'm not kidding."

"This says she will be skating as a Polichenelle, but what does that mean?"
"Cute. Polichenelle means cute in French."
"Does it really?"
"Absolutely."
I don't know if they actually bought it but they did give me a check.

I had some minor brain borkage when one mom was saying that her daughter was in Alpha 1 but she'd promised her she could skate with the Beta kids since she likes that number better. "So why not get to beta first..."
"But I promised her. And I already filled out the form."
Why in heaven's name would you do that? I'll let the coaches worry about that one.

I kept watching the clock, realizing I was missing Stitch's evaluation and he may be mad at me. The other mom I was working with told me to go watch, and so I caught the tail end of the test. Stitch came across with his paper, him and Other Kid, and they seemed happy.

Stitch handed me his paper with a big smile. All 6's and 7's, one 4 on the Change Foot Spin, which I was expecting a lower score on. But a four? I was stunned. Was this some kind of gimme? Was I being punk'd? "This is great, Stitch. I'm really proud of you. All that work is paying off!"
He just smiled and stepped out to warm up.

I promised him a celebratory lunch and went back to the costume table. Stitch took care of his skates while I did more measuring and chatting. I showed the eval form to Coach, and she felt good about it. "The change foot spin is hard. It takes awhile," she said.

Again, I don't care if this snags him. I'm prepared to camp out in FS3 awhile. And it's all hard.

We headed home, tired but elated. At Subway later on, we split a roast beef and talked over the mistakes on his latest school test. He had confused "fair" as in "good looking" and "fair" as in "not stormy." We went over a few other words that need to be read in proper context to be understood.

It made me think about the context of that skating evaluation.

At any rate, I did get shanghied into helping with the Costume Sale next weekend. I'll be at the rink anyway so why the heck not. And if I stay until noon then I can see some of my friends in the L2S levels who I've been missing. Stitch can relax and eat donuts, which seems to be his favorite pastime after lessons. I know that may make some of the Nutrition Fanatics cringe, but I really do make him eat better for the rest of the week.

Honest.

(Edit; This is actually a Polichinelle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulcinella )