Look Ma! No Training Wheels!

Double A has always been the kind of kid who will not do something unless she is certain she can do it well. (nothing like her mother. ahem.) She is also the kind of kid who will not do something with pushing and prodding from her parents. This is hard for us parents to let her reach these things in her own time when we know she can do it. So, I think we did pretty well with the bike riding.

My kids are a little behind in learning to ride bikes. Our yard is tiny and we live on a city street. We let them practice in the alley behind the house or we have to load the bikes into the car and drive to the park...this doesn't happen much. So we were surprised when Double A announced to us she wanted her training wheels off. No prodding from us, not even any real suggestions. She just decided.

And she did GREAT!! I have tons of photos from the event but will spare you all the minutia of each rotation of the wheels. Here are a couple of the good ones :)

Husband #1 gives her a push off and there she goes! He is behind her clapping :)

I just love this one...you can see her little mouth concentration and everything is out of focus but her.

A couple of things to note:

1 - we DO NOT make our children wear all of that safety gear. We require the helmet but the elbow and knee pads are their choice, not ours!

2- Upon viewing these photos the need for a larger bike has become glaringly obvious!

Here is one of Bumblebee:

I am not sure if you can see but he has on gardening gloves, cowboy boots with one pant leg tucked in, elbow pads and just one knee pad. He just got his bike for Christmas but decided since his sister was taking off her training wheels, he should, too. He obviously did not do as well so we immediately put them back on. We also think he just wanted to use the tools to take them off.

Now, the problem is she cannot get started without our help. (or so she thinks) So she cannot just get out there and play in the yard with her bike unless we are there. We'll get there!