Crosswind Landings--My First Plateau?

Lesson 17
8-15-12
0.8 hours logged
18.6 hours total recorded in logbook

My flying lesson today was certainly not the best I've ever had and frankly, was a bit discouraging. It was another day of perfect weather for it and I was glad to be there as always but, judging by how I did today, it appears crosswind landings may be where I hit my first learning plateau.

I began by making a fairly decent takeoff on the concrete of Runway 29 to start so that's encouraging but this was followed by a landing on grass runway 18 which was far from impressive and that seemed to set tone for the rest of the ones I did that day. All of them were in varying degrees of crosswind. 

The wind really seemed to be doing some strange things today. Or maybe it was just me. Not all of my landings were as bad as the first and one or two were okay but after experiencing what it feels like to make a really good landing, it's incredibly frustrating not to be able to do one even though crosswinds do admittedly make things more difficult. I have to learn how make good crosswind landings and would like to be able to stop thinking of them as being any harder than when the wind is straight down the runway. I know I've got a long ways to go before I'll be at that point. 

There's just so much more to focus on when landing in a crosswind! On final, you must crab the airplane to keep it from drifting off the extended runway centerline then, near the runway threshold, you straighten it out and put in (in today's case) right stick, left rudder. It feels awkward to put the plane in this position with one wing low as you're coming in to land, so much so in fact that I would forget to level and flare or not do it enough or at exactly the right time. Or I would miscalculate how close to the ground I was and would inevitably bounce. I guess this was probably because I was also forgetting to look far down the runway as I landed. So many things to remember! I don't know how I'll ever get it!

I did do better with the crosswind takeoffs and some of those were pretty good but there's always room for improvement there too. After the lesson, Steve gave me a reading assignment from the Student Pilot's Manual (a really great resource) which, I hope, along with just thinking through the landings and visualizing them in my head, will help. In spite of my discouragement, I am eager to prove to myself that this big challenge, like the little ones, is surmountable.