A Little Something Extra For Each Child

Happy Skating Kids, Cartoon Character and…… Aw Shucks Rockstar About To Get New Blades

How we ended up spending HKD 250 there-and-back cab fare across town to this place in Sai Wan Ho after school was because one day sometime before the summer hols my  helper abruptly mentioned Rockstar had refused to blade anymore. For weeks. She’d just carried the blades and his helmet each day to meet him at the bus stop, he’d refuse to put them on, she’d come home with them. Rockstar had not mentioned it in his daily accounts of other goings on either, usually what he says to me is who he’s played with for the day. So when I finally knew to ask he said his feet hurt because the boots were too small. That’s when I felt quite bad – when we buy sports shoes for him for school/ PE the guys at the store say we should get them fitted and be prepared to change them about twice a year. He’s had the same blades from Bumps to Babes that we got on a whim since Kindergarten. <ducks head>

Checker Sports And Academy homepage

The nice Canto guy who picks up can swing a little English, and is mildly surprised I’m calling up not for lessons but for gear. Turns out they start skate school at……… 3 years old. (?! thought that’s very young… then again Rockstar had Kindy schoolmates attending ice skating class which is roughly in the same neighborhood, so…..)

And that’s how we end up cabbing to this very local area after I call them up and find they close in an hour.

The cabbie is surprised. The guy on the phone at the shop is also surprised, when I ask about the availability of cabs. The shop is right near Shaukeiwan MRT station. But it’s also almost rush hour – we have to cab in and out to a train station which would’ve been about HKD 150 both ways before our MRT fare (maybe another HKD 40) anyway.

Rockstar peruses all the press…

Before getting fitted

This time I get proper blades that can be adjusted up 4 shoe sizes (not the toys from Bumps) – and take a Youtube of the guy explaining how. Rockstar asks if they have any with lights, like he once saw a much older kid in our neighborhood whizz by on. The (very) helpful store assistant blinks. “Most of those have the lights in the wheels. We don’t carry those because they run not on batteries but on friction – which makes the blades go slower. We are about speed, it’s what we train the kids for – speed skating.” (That’s roughly what he said in a mixture of Cantonese and English when I couldn’t catch him the first time la)

Belatedly he then remembers they have a pair with battery-operated lights in the soles of the boots which makes me feel totally lucked out because I’d already called Bumps to Babes and Toys Club and checked the Toys R Us website to no avail…

Ta-raaa!

(The store guys are “Oh, so he can skate already. We thought you were going to need lessons next.” Not in a pushy way at all, you understand. And they are very friendly and helpful and I keep thinking they’re students manning the store part time… The guy doing Rockstar’s fitting speaks perfectly good English though as always prefers Cantonese)

And so Rockstar does the Yay I Got New Blades Obligatory Pose Outside Store.

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Now, after so much traveling, I discovered I could no longer sleep in the middle of the night (about half the time she asks) on the little Ikea sofa bed with Little Miss anymore, we needed just a little more bed space.

Thing is, the “unofficial” store and laundry room 3rd bedroom in our apartment…. is just that. Kings once remarked “Which of our kids is ever going to want to sleep there,” because unlike the “official” baby/kid’s Cars sticker decked-out room with beautiful whitewashed Indigo Kids bunk bed to boot, the other room, never photographed before, is severely plain. Lightbulb in ceiling. All our excess-sized cupboards from the previous place (which had a very different layout) went in there. Then we dumped Rockstar’s old red race car bed in there to boot when we promised him some the “Lego headquarters” atop the bunk bed. (Little Miss still doesn’t know about it – partly because we’ve been traveling so much)

That’s when I did this

So then I totally went overboard with all these Indigo Kids decals. That’s two full sets of not-on-offer fabric (not paper) decals that I’ve been re-arranging quite a bit. But I felt so happy. Just look at all these trees and birds. Happy Trees, I called them.

Little Miss sleeping peacefully under Happy Trees

ps: Only thing is the moment she’s awake she gets really excited pointing everything out (she got to stick/ restick a few) so she really doesn’t sleep in

pps: Note baby book lining side of bed so she doesn’t hit her head