Our Fourth Child

Now that our baby is (mostly) sleeping through the night, my husband Ryan and I decided it was time for another child.

This child is 16ft wide, 24 ft long and lives in our front yard. It is our ice rink.

I’ve been wanting this child for a while. In fact, a couple years ago, I dropped Ryan a hint by sending him an article subtly called “Why Your Family Needs an Ice Rink.”

Being a supportive spouse, he read the article (apparently more thoroughly than I had) and said to me: “Annalise, this isn’t very convincing. The author here gets a horrible sinus infection from going out at 2am to add water to the rink.”

Ryan’s not wanting a sinus infection, combined with me expecting our actual children (and therefore unable to skate) several of the last winters, has led us to not build a rink. Until now.

Reasons to not build an ice rink this year:

• pregnant
• busy doing indoor activities with people
• taking a tropical vacation
• fear of sinus infection
  
  Clearly there weren’t enough reasons to not build a rink this year.

So on January 1, we celebrated the New Year the way normal people do – by dragging our dog’s kiddie pool (that’s a subject for its own blog post I suppose) to the front yard and filling it with water so we could measure the yard’s slope.

Ryan sketched out some rough calculations, with the assistance of our children.

Slope determined, it was time to find a building plan and gather materials. The easiest option was a premade kit costing roughly $1,800. Since we weren’t entirely confident of the rink’s feasibility (or of our children’s ability to get to college on a skating scholarship) we decided to go a cheaper route and build one out of wood.

In addition to wood, we also procured 50lbs of steel stakes, boring miscellaneous hardware and a enough white plastic liner to build 4 rinks (because white liner, which is helpful to reflect the sun, was only available in this astronomically large amount).

Supplies gathered, it was time to build before the snow storm and deep freeze that were headed our way in about 24 hours.

The next morning we determined the exact location to start building. And as Ryan drove in the first spike, our conversation went like this:

Annalise: “It’s just like the railroad! Let me get a picture.”

Ryan: “That was the last spike.”

Now at this point you might be thinking “wait, so the ice rink was Annalise’s idea but up until now she has done nothing to bring it to fruition?” This would seem correct.

While measuring, calculating and building in general are not things I am good at, I am very talented at talking with friends. A “soft skill” if you will. And while my grade 6 teacher thought I needed “to learn that socializing is for recess” (per a report card I’ll never forget), I would argue that in this situation my chattiness served us well.

I mentioned our ice rink plans to a friend of ours a few days before we planned to build. A retired carpenter, he volunteered to help. In addition to skills and knowledge, he also brought a trunk full of tools.

A few hours later, the frame was ready to be filled with water. Now all that was needed was a blow torch to thaw our outdoor faucet. Thankfully our friend had one of those as well.

Faucet thawed, we attached the garden hose and watched the sun set over our newest family addition. We were so proud of our little one.

Over the next few days we excitedly checked on the rink and took a few cautious turns trying out the ice. And just when we thought it was about ready to use, it snowed and snowed and snowed and our newly formed ice turned into icebergs.

We were out of the honeymoon phase with our 4th child. Like a teething baby, the ice rink needed a bit of extra TLC and Ryan and I spent most of the evenings the following week rebuilding the ice, freezing a few inches of water at a time.

And, just as you learn a routine for soothing your teething child, we became pretty proficient at taking care of the rink using the following 10 step process:

1. Bundle up in snow pants, coat, boots, hat, gloves, scarf.
2. Find hair dryer.
3. Run extension cord from the garage to the front outdoor faucet.
4. Plug in hair dryer and thaw faucet for a minute or two.
5. Haul garbage can full of garden hose out of the house (where it’s being stored so as to not freeze).
6. Attach hose using wrench.
7. Flood rink for approximately 10 minutes, being sure to move hose around sufficiently so as not to create melted area in ice from water pressure (those prove very hard to fix).
8. Turn off water.
9. Attempt to wrangle quickly stiffening hose back into empty garbage can. Feel like alligator wrestler.
10. Haul hose, hair dryer, extension cord and tired self back into house.
    

I was telling my neighbor about our ice rink TLC antics and she confided to me: “You know, a few times I’ve seen some dark shadows in your front yard as I’ve been heading upstairs to bed and I’ve had to go check and make sure that it is actually you guys out there.”

The TLC combined with a long cold stretch finally paid off and all of us have enjoyed some great skating as a family and with friends.

Sometimes the kids just walk on the ice. Sometimes they crawl on the ice. Sometimes they skate for 3 minutes and then want their boots back on. And sometimes they just eat the ice.

One night, after taking care of the rink, Ryan and I came back inside and had the following conversation:

Ryan: “This ice rink is a pain in the ass but it’s also the best thing ever.”

Me: “So it’s kinda like having kids.”

In the end, it turned out Ryan didn’t need to worry about getting a sinus infection. It was me who got the sinus infection, which I suppose is only appropriate as it is moms who bear the brunt physically with children.

Would I do it again?

Sometimes it’s too soon to ask a mom if she is thinking of having another child.

But last week I caught our oldest child, who a month ago could barely skate herself, teaching her younger sister how to skate. The lesson lasted about 10 seconds before they both just laid down on the ice. But to answer your question, ya, I think so.