Today I get to be a gushy momma.  I’m not really sure what “gushy” means, but it sounds a bit like the way I felt when I helped my daughter prepare for her first skating competition of the week.  I wish I had thought to capture the makeup and hair session on camera, but I forgot.  Just imagine a photo of my daughter sitting with one eye clenched tight, tears running out of her eyelids as we tried to apply super glittery eyeliner without getting any glitter in her eye.  The things we do for beauty.

I adore this picture of her even though the exposure is a bit bright. The sun streamed in through the double glass doors behind her, but her smile is what gets me every time.  She is truly in her element.

There’s that smile again!  Actually her coach told her that if she was smiling, then she wasn’t stretching out enough….so in this picture he’s helping her add more pain to the stretch.  You can’t tell from this picture, but her foot is propped up on a trash can.  Ah, the things we do for flexibility!

Now there’s my Princess Lea.  Only her cinnamon bun is on the back of her head instead of the sides.  One day she’d like to skate to Star Wars music and be dressed as Princess Lea…but I digress.  Maybe that’s what I want her to do.  Anyway, I like this shot because it shows my handiwork.  I used one of those thick mesh bun shaper thingys that the clerk at Sally’s Beauty Supply told me would work.  What she didn’t know is that my child has enough hair to cover the heads of three people….thus, she ended up with a bun that was about three times the size it was supposed to be.  Underneath are fourteen million bobby pins holding it all up.  I counted.

Now she’s putting on her skates.  I’m glad she is grown up and can do these all by herself because I’m just not strong enough.  Seriously.  It takes a lot of muscle and coordination to lace skates.  Last year, her coach helped her.  Now she can do them herself in three minutes, seventeen seconds.

The rink looked spiffy today even if we did have to park three miles away and trudge across a melting hot parking lot.  Probably because this rink is one of three rinks hosting 1100 skaters this week.

Here she is during her five minute warm-up for her solo compulsory routine.  (Basically a skating program done on half a rink, without music.)

And this is another shot taken during the five minute warm up.  I wanted to have oodles of photos to share, but most of them ended up blurry because I was way up in the stands shooting through scratchy plexiglass.

Then my girl skated her compulsory…and took second place.  The first place skater was from China.  As in, traveled to the United States all the way from China to compete in this competition China. It made my gripes about our forty minute trip to the rink seem a bit…overstated.  I didn’t take photos of her while she skated because I wanted to relish every moment watching her.  Plus, my hands were shaking and my heart was pounding so hard I thought for sure the people around my husband and me could hear it.  The heart pounding thing is part of the territory when you are the parent of a skater, I’m coming to learn.

The rest of the day consisted of more skate practice before tomorrow’s competition for her and oodles of Spelling Tower for me and my brainy man.  Tomorrow she will be skating her Freestyle 3 program.  This is the Big Daddy program…all of one minute, 38 seconds.  I’ve sneaked a few peeks, and I love, love, love it.  The choreography is beautiful and graceful, and when I see my girl out there on the ice, I marvel that my genetic code contributed anything towards this athlete of mine who walks around on a narrow blade like she was born with it attached to her foot.

I’m not sure how gushy I will be tomorrow morning at 5am when I wake up to start the beautification process all over again.

But this smile makes the early morning worth it!  I am one gushy, blessed mamma indeed!