I love to ride my bicycle

"The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles. A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard." ~Sloan Wilson

Score another point for buying our own house! At the age of 8 years 5 1/2 months, Emma has learned to ride a 2-wheel bike. She's had a bike since she was 5, but living where we did, on the corner of a busy street, with no real usable lawn, getting her to be able to ride it very often was hard.

Now her bike with the training wheels was way too small. So, Saturday, while out yardsale-ing, we saw a bigger 2-wheel bike that was in really nice condition, for $16. We couldn't pass it up. After a trip to the store for a new helmet, and after putting the younger 2 to bed, we set out to teach Emma how to ride.

The first hurdle was teaching her how shift her weight when she starts falling to one side. She had the pedaling down (and trust me, riding a bike on thick grass is no easy feat) and was doing well with the steering, but turning without falling over was still an issue. By the end of the night, she was able to go in a straight line without falling over, and with me only holding on long enough to get her started.

Yesterday morning we tried again, and within about 30 minutes, Emma was doing circles around our lawn & driveway, again with me only helping her to get going for a second. After I went inside to make the kiddos some lunch, Emma stayed outside and I watched her from the window. She could now get started all on her own & did about 30 revolutions in a row!! I'm so very proud of her! After not having ridden a bike period for almost a year, she picked it up really well.

Now she wants to make these long treks out to the park and has it in her brain that she'll be able to ride her bike to school next fall. Hate to break it to you kid, but your school is too far away. :( But, we have a nice big high school right across the street that has a sidewalk all the way around it, so I have a feeling we'll be making a lot of family walks around there this summer.















Brownie points for who can guess where the title of this post is from. :D