snapshots

And another first - yesterday I took the training wheels off of Miss Speed Demon's little pink princess bicycle. That slowed her down! For 20 minutes. We spent an hour going back and forth along the sidewalk in front of my parents' house. Their street is a little flatter than ours. I had no idea how to teach a 4 year old to ride a bike, but figured it would have to do mostly with letting her figure it out and I just had to make sure she didn't hurt herself too badly. I think I ran more than I have in the past several months, too. So I don't have a picture to show for it.

So my method was to hold her seat with one hand and run with her, letting her steer herself into the grass and bushes until she learned how to center and balance herself, and put her feet down. I would catch her only if she leaned far enough to fall. Just when I thought perhaps she wasn't ready, suddenly she managed 6 ft on her own, then 12 ft, and very quickly progressed to half the block before she slowed herself down to stop. She did wipe out a few times, including giving one particular hedge 3 or 4 "hugs" (I don't know why she kept doing headers into it). Like getting her ears pierced, she refused to give up and climbed back on her bike after a short cry. There was no blood so I let her go on. I can't believe I learned to ride a bike without a helmet when I was a child.