Rollin' Along

Bryan goes back to work today. He's been home on parental leave for the last six weeks. It has been heavenly having him here. The kids and I are all going to miss him during the day. I hope we're all happy and coherent when he gets home this evening.

As a final adventure, we went to the park on Saturday to ride bikes. This might not seem like a huge deal, and it probably wouldn't be, except that before Saturday Peter was our only child that could ride a bike. Actually, before last week, Peter was our only child that had a proper bike at all. Sophie has a balance bike, and it's great, but it's a touch too small for her, so it doesn't count. The cub scouts were supposed to have a bike rally for the pack meeting last week, so, after planning to for ages, we finally got bikes for Cooper and Phoebe.

And then the bike rally was cancelled because of rain. It was actually a blessing, because Cooper would have had to walk his bike since he couldn't ride it. Saturday was supposed to be insanely hot, so we got to the park extra early.

Peter zipped around the parking lot, biking/walking trail, and fields. Sophie alternated between propelling herself on the balance bike around the grass and playing on the playground. I passed around water and sunscreen and carried a sleeping Topher in the Baby Bjorn. And Bryan taught Cooper and Phoebe how to fall off their bikes so they wouldn't be afraid to try pedaling, then he moved on to the actual riding.



Cooper focused, listened, and worked hard. By the time we left, he could ride around the fields. I was impressed with how quickly he picked it up. Here you can see Peter and Cooper in the distance, both rolling along.

Phoebe had a harder time. She's usually a quick study, so when something takes more than one or two tries to learn, she tends to fall apart. She did a decent job of learning to fall off the bike, after much murmuring. That's as far as she got though, so we'll need to find another time for her to try it again.

We finally left when the kids were so sweaty they looked like they'd had showers.

It was a good morning.