Emma's First Ride

The entire summer Emma has been begging me to take off her training wheels so she can learn to ride her bike. We can't just go out to the street, because we live on the mountain and there are no flat areas to learn, so we have to go to the park. With Jeremy working and traveling this whole summer, there wasn't a time when I could take her without Livi.

When we had our first snow at the beginning of October, I knew our window of opportunity had passed and we would do it next summer. However, today, it was such a beautiful fall day and the kids wanted to go outside to ride on our basketball court. Emma again begged me to take off the training wheels. I decided I would let her try since it would probably be the last day of the year she can ride outside.

I took them off and began to show her how to ride. It was only a matter of seconds before Livi started getting in the way, pulling on my shirt, and trying to push Emma off the bike. I kept trying to distract Livi long enough to attend to Emma again. I knew this is how it would be with Livi there and it just re-affirmed my decision to wait until next year.

I took Livi inside to allow her to finish her tantrum and when I looked out the window, Emma was trying to ride on her own. She struggled and I thought she would soon give up. She never really fell, but couldn't get the hang of it. When we taught Landon to ride, we went to a huge parking lot and so he had enough room to get going. By the time Emma got both feet on the pedals, she reached the end of the court and had to get off and turn around. Well, after about ten minutes she decided to just learn to balance AND turn so she didn't have to stop at all.

So I left Livi in the house, while she watched me through the screen door, and took this video.

Yup, in a matter of 15 minutes, Emma went from training wheels to this:

She fell just as the battery ran out. She got back up and laughed and continued to ride for another hour. So I'm thinking that this it was a better place to learn after all, because she had to learn to navigate turns, slow down and stop all at the same time. Now I feel so bad that I didn't just do this at the beginning of the summer. Emma is such a rockstar!!