Noah Rides a Bicycle

I texted this photo to my mom I think last week? Her only response was, "Soon he's going to drive." That made me sad. Today he rode a bike without training wheels. Such an exciting but also sad day!

In the photo, he's riding the balance bike that he got for his birthday from Auntie Jumi and Uncle Eugene. I had just bought him a regular bike with training wheels, as I wasn't fully sold on the balance bike since it seemed like expensive training wheels to me. So not true. Noah wasn't sold on the balance bike either. He'd just recently started using the pedals on his tricycle, so he took to the regular bike w/training wheels right away - loved the new speed. He said the balance bike was "too wobbly" so he refused to ride it. We finally convinced him to give it a try, and slowly over the past few weeks he became more and more comfortable with it and would alternate between the two bikes. In this past week, he actually started balancing on the regular bike, even with the training wheels on. Today, I finally decided that the training wheels were starting to get in his way now that he was becoming more skilled with the balance bike, so I tried convincing him to let go of the training wheels... He cried and screamed and refused. So I said okay, he went off to ride his regular bike some more, and then a few minutes later came back and said, "Okay, you can take them off now." So he gave it a try, put his pedaling and balance bike skills together, and voila! Riding his bike by himself! After a few runs, he even started telling me to let go when I was hovering. He is still working on the take-off and stopping, but after we went out for another bike riding session when Peter came home, he improved a lot just in that hour or so.

Noah had so much fun riding without training wheels, and even though he fell quite a few times, he kept getting back on, which kind of surprised me. He tends to become defeated pretty easily. I think the speed is too alluring for him. When we went back inside though, he insisted that we put the training wheels back on. :)

Meanwhile, Sarah is still working on walking. Between Noah and Sarah, I think I'm going to have some serious back problems these next few weeks.