Our Nightly Ritual

When the Olympics were on Brayden had an OBSESSION with Apolo Ohno....so much so, that he even created an outfit to look just like him. He wanted to BE Apolo Ohno. We had to watch Apolo daily/nightly at least 6 times a day...thanks goodness for DVR!! To this day we still have the Olympcis recorded so we can watch him, at least now its just every now and then. :)

Brayden's impression of Apolo by day...

**It really bothered him that he didn't have a "helmet" to match Apolo or a tshirt with an American flag...where are those $5 Old Navy 4th of July tshirts when you really need them?!? He even used face paint on himself to make a gotee.
And his impression of Apolo by night...

Now that he has been to a few of the Allen Americans hockey games, his obsession/passion has switched over to hockey. He still loves Apolo and mentions him every now and then but now the main focuss has moved on to hockey.

Every night for the last three weeks or so he has a ritual that he does...he plays hockey in the living room. Although its just about to drive me crazy, he has a TON of fun playing by himself and I must say he has quite the lil imagination with it. He is constantly adding new ideas to mimic the real games we go watch.

Let's start with his wardrobe:

*For skates/socks---he has to wear his soccer socks. These serve two purposes: they are his skates (easier to slide) and they are also his socks because hockey players wear high socks. He HAS to wear long gym/sport shorts and he has to wear some sort of a jersey for a top. In theory, he would LOVE a helmet to add to his ensemble, but I don't think he would last more than a few minutes with one on. All of these items have to stay on the staircase at the end of the night, so they will be ready for him the next day when he gets home from school.

On to to the game..
* He has set up two chairs on each end to serve as the nets.

*After he "scores" I have to wave around the rally towel that we got at a game and chant 3 times..Go Allen, Go Allen, Go Allen Americans. (Trust me, he counts to make sure that I do it 3 times!)

*He will purposely bang himself into the wall and pretend that someone pushed him...and he even occasionally falls as he "skates." He also puts himself in timeout for "pushing the other guy".

*After he plays awhile he goes off the "rink" over to the side, which I then have to act as the zamboni.....my job is to use the tops of the flowers to "sweep the ice". Then when he is ready to come back on the ice, I have to give him high fives just like we do for the real players.

* When he is done playing, he always puts his pucks back in either the refrigerator or freezer. (We saw a short clip on our espn video on demand. It had a segment on unusual sports jobs, and we found out that someone's job is to make sure the pucks are frozen before the game.)

Now, one positive with this whole ritual he insists that we keep the living room floor SPOTLESS He does not dare allow even a piece of paper to get on his "ice rink". If I take my shoes off, he gets mad at me for leaving them on "the rink" and tells me to go put them up. I'm trying to find away for him to care about keeping his bedroom floor just as clean, but so far nothing is working.

Since he is enjoying hockey so much, I thought it was time to see if he is really interested in it. We are lucky enough to have a Dallas Stars Center right around the corner from us, so last week I went to see if they have any summer hockey programs for him. We found out that he first needs to know how to ice skate before he can play hockey (imagine that), so I signed him up for his first ever ice skating lessons. It's a 5 week mini program, so we'll see how he does tomorrow is his first lesson. I'll keep you posted.

Before we left, we had to go into the equipment/gift shop. He of course had to try on some hockey equipment for fun.
I was AMAZED at how much hockey equipment cost!! I'm hoping we can go back to wanting to be Apolo Ohno....speed skating equipment doesn't seem like it will cost so much!