Hard Core Henry

Justin has been really excited that Henry is getting to the age where he may be able to understand and like winter sports, so this month we took Henry ice skating and Skiing, both times during his scheduled nap, so it was dangerous, but with Justin's impossible schedule that's the only time we could go.

Ice skating was first. He didn't seem to have a problem walking around in his skates on the rubber, but when we got out on the ice, he just wanted us to hold him up and push him around. He was all smiles until he tried to get some snow off of the ice and his hand immediately froze and then he freaked out. Henry is always wanting to touch the snow, but every single time he does, after a couple seconds, he turns and starts screaming and instead of trying to clean off his hands by himself, he slowly waddles over to me so I can do it and then "hhhaaaa" my warm breath on his frozen hands until they are warm again. So you ask why Henry doesn't have gloves on? Well, the few pair of gloves we have don't allow Henry to use any of his fingers, so he hates wearing them. We might have had some functional gloves, but Daddy had to buy gloves for a 10 year old thinking he would quickly grow into them and that it would save money. Well, all we have is a baby with cold hands. Ugh!
So, after we took a breather we went back out and Henry finally understood that he could stand by himself and he even balanced and moved around for a good 10 seconds before he fell again. His favorite thing was to be sitting on my skate looking backwards as I went around the rink. Everyone with screaming children thought it was a great idea.


So because we were impressed by Henry's general ease with having strange shoes strapped to his feet and that he was so easy going as we dragged him around and around the rink, we decided it was time to take him skiing. There is this really great place called Boyce Park that's about a half hour from us and the rental for Henry's skis and ticket were a total of....$12! His lift pas was only $4 and since he only went up the lift once, it ended up actually being a really expensive ticket. Once again our only choice was to take him during his naptime, so we were ready for the worst. When he doesn't get a nap he is easily excitable, but also easily annoyed. Since it ended up taking FOREVER for Justin to park and get all his gear down to where we had been waiting and get dressed and get everything in a locker, it was already a rocky start. We also had to wait in line for a while to go up the bunny hill's "flying carpet" which is a rubber moving walkway going up the hill. By the time we got to the top, he had had enough. After failing to soothe him, Justin snowboarded him down the mountain and I took him in for a while and Justin went back out to take a few runs. We got chile cheese fries (which no one out east knows about even though they have the fries, the chile and the cheese at every resort, they never think to put them together to make the ultimate ski treat)and I had to beg them to make it since they "have no idea how to price it." I'm sure it's really hard to figure out. So, that basically did the trick and so we went back out again and instead of going up the huge bunny hill, I stayed at the bottom and put him on this smaller hill and let him go down a bunch of times with me running backwards in front of him. He LOVED it and after a couple times would say, "ready, one, two, free, go!" and put his arms out like Titanic and go down the hill with little help from me. He finally realized how much fun it was and he even learned to walk around with his skis on his feet and seemed to really enjoy it as well. We took more video of him than photos, so maybe I'll figure out how to put that up. These photos aren't all that great and he's not smiling. He did, however take a major fall and face planted in the hard snow, giving him a snow rash on his upper lip that actually bled. He cried for a while, but wanted to keep going after we hugged him and kissed his wound. I guess the photographer for the resort was taking photos for a new brochure that day and was taking photos of him, so we'll see if he's in it when it comes out. Already a celebrity:) haha! The world better watch out for Henry Jackson Hohl!