mathmom's blog

If all our biking trips go as well as they did today, we may never get up on wheels again. It started with me actually getting on my bike to ride with Ella, Amanda and Luke just in our neighborhood. I planned a 1 mile ride around the block---no problem, right? Amanda was high on riding her 2 wheeler, Luke had said at Grandma's that he loved going for bike rides. Ella was on her scooter, ready to have fun and encourage. Well, it turns out that the smallest, least steep hills in our neighborhood are larger than the ones on the trail in WI. Amanda would stop her bike when it got hard, and having stopped, couldn't get going again. Luke wouldn't actually push down on the pedals, it seemed, or at least he would push down on both pedals at the same time... I got off the bike and coached him up the hill: "Stand on this foot. No, THIS foot. Now the other. Keep looking ahead. Don't stop! Switch feet!" I had to physically lift up his other foot, or he...

This summer I had 2 goals for my children (I know, making goals for your children is incredibly arrogant, but I made them anyway). I wanted Luke to learn to swim and Amanda to learn to ride her bike without training wheels. Well, Luke is not doing so well in the swimming department, but Amanda has ditched the training wheels. I actually removed the training wheels from her bike a few months ago, but she has responded by not riding her bike. For the past few weeks we've been visiting Grandma and Grandpa, where everyone rides bikes. I asked Michael to test Amanda and help her learn to ride without training wheels. He came back and said that Amanda was capable of riding without them, but she wanted them on. Apparently she was afraid of falling. The problem is that training wheels really interfere with riding fast and without falling. We would ride down the long sidewalk near GM and GP's house, and she'd be stuck with Luke, while the big kids were riding fast and furiou...

We went biking yesterday on the greenway . It was a bit silly---we had to drive 15 minutes to get there, and then spend time wrestling our bikes out of the car and putting them back together, then we rode down to the other end of the greenway and back in about 40 minutes. But it was exercise, and it was beautiful: clear dark blue skies, warm sun but cool dry air, leaves beginning to show tinges of color. We rode through woods and a field of black-eyed susans , as well as over the highway on a pedestrian bridge---something about being above cars moving at 60 mph is really fun. Can't wait until Amanda is a good enough biker to join us, although we'll have to find something else to do with the bikes other than bringing them in the trunk of the van. I'm grateful to be in NC in the fall.

Eleanor loves riding her bike, so we decided this weekend to take the plunge and get her a 20 inch bike (so she doesn't have to pedal crouched over, even with the seat all the way up...) Michael took her to all the bike shops in town, finally found a gender-neutral yellow bike that Eleanor likes, and bought it. It has hand brakes, which she is getting used to using, as well as gears, which she has used going up one of the steeper hills in our neighborhood. Hmm , I think her bike has almost as many gears as mine does. Michael has taken her out on several neighborhood bike rides. He rides my bike (which recently got fixed) with the seat all the way up. She does very well, and his main focus is teaching her to look before she crosses streets and to obey traffic rules. She will be one of the few bikers in our neighborhood who do obey them... When Eleanor moved up to the yellow bike, Amanda got to have the purple bike. She has been waiting eagerly for this ever since we got the b...

Today Eleanor really rode around a lot on her bike. Yesterday our neighbor saw me holding Luke and a kite, while keeping Amanda from getting run over and trying to help Eleanor ride her bike, so he came over to help out. He's a good coach, and I think someone other than her family encouraging her really had an effect. At any rate, she learned to turn around. This allowed her to go up and down the driveway. This evening she went down to the cul - de -sac, back up past our house to the top of the hill, down to the cul - de -sac, to the hill, for 25 minutes.... She said she was going as fast as a racer! So fast Daddy couldn't keep up! But when she fell down and hurt herself, Daddy ran really fast to her. This girl, who last weekend didn't want to ride on the driveway (she didn't want to hurt herself), now prefers to stop by standing up on the brake and screeching to a stop. She also likes to go as fast as she can while sticking both feet up in the air and shouti...