two wheel heaven

Rom is really such a funny kid. He goes in these streaks of what he is willing to wear to bed, and during the day for that matter. A few months ago it was PJs all the time. No matter what, he cried if we made him put on something other than footie jammies (most of the time we let him wear them because who cares really...but other times we were going to church and footie jammies just didn't seem right.) Then he gave that up and moved to shorts, t-shirt, and shoes all the time. No matter what. Even to bed. Again - full on tears if we would not let him wear shoes to bed. (again - who cares of he wears shoes to bed? not us. Unless I can smell his feet from another room.) He also frequently gets out of bed and changes his clothes and then gets back into bed. While on his way back to bed he also seems to gather a few things to take with him. (see below) I'm pretty sure a few nights ago he really wanted to dream about the beach because I found him asleep with no shirt, his swimsuit, and flipflops.

We could tell last year that Rom was about ready to learn to ride a bike but he was just too short (kind of an overall family problem) and he wasn't big enough for even the smallest bikes. Six months later however, he fits on the small bike.

You may recall that we taught Lainey pretty late in the season last year to ride a bike. It basically began as a way for Laine and I to torture each other and no one was happy. It was painful until we discovered several tips that were completely news to me and have made all the difference. My test for learning to ride a bike now is if you can hop on one foot then you have the necessary coordination to ride a bike.

3.5 year old Romney can hop on one foot. It is therefore time to ride a bike. At first he was not happy about the loss of his training wheels. We pulled out some old games and spent a few nights in the Church parking lot doing what we like to call bike bowling. Sure enough - after a couple of nights (about 45 minute sessions) Romney was rolling like a pro!

He had done so well one night that he woke up the next morning desperate to try again so before I went to work we put him on a slightly larger bike with functional pedals and....




Once he got the feel we couldn't get him off. This is him a couple of hours later.




Family bike rides are so much more fun now!

If my business fails I'm pretty sure my next job is going to be teaching how-to-ride-a-bike classes. I'm going to be really expensive, but what would you pay to not have to run behind your kid's bike for weeks? What would you pay for your kid not to look at you like you are the worst person ever just because they can't steer and ran right into a tree? Compelling, isn't it.

Romney, I think, did misunderstand when we called him "biker dude" however. I think he thought that in order to be a true biker dude he had to have some tattoos. That wasn't really the sort of biker dude we were thinking, but whatever.