Further to yesterday’s note about Bea learning to pedal around on only two wheels, we thought we’d share a couple more pictures.
One from the weekend, that whilst it has been edited slightly it remains a wonderful picture – the face painter at the local village fair was rather special. Bea decided she wanted to be a tiger several minutes before we even knew where the face painter was!
After all her cycling exploits we were both super impressed at her tenacity; we only realised the extent when you look at the number of knocks, scrapes and bruises she has from bouncing off the tarmac car park.
Also as a reward for trying so hard, and maybe, just maybe help reduce the injuries going forward, we bought her some proper cycling mitts and gave them to her just before bed time tonight.
Here we see her sporting them ably assisted by her big brother (yes, they are pink – in fact they are pink camo!):
Today our daughter is 3 years, 7 months and 2 weeks old.
Today is also the day our daughter learnt how to cycle on two wheels and two wheels only.
Bea has more than mastered the art of cycling with stabilisers.
She had reached the point that little out-riggers were getting in her way, to the point that she asked for them to be removed so she could go faster!!
With recent adventures on a little PW50 motorbike (with me on the back) Bea asked if she could learn to ride a motorbike.
I explained to her how she once could only crawl, had learned to walk, then learned to run, then learned to ride her balance bike (no pedals), then learned how to pedal on her little pink Ridgeback “Minny” with stabilisers.
She now wanted to ride her bicycle without the stabilisers, so I promised if she could learn to ride without, she could learn to ride the little motorbike.
We don’t have much hard standing, so knew we needed to go to the car park outside her nursery.
This place isn’t alien to us as both Charlie and Ollie went “sans-stabilisers” here too – although Charlie was more than a decade ago!
We explained to Bea how she would have to try really hard, and that she was going to fall off a lot, but as long as she kept getting back up again she would learn how to ride without those (dreaded!) stabilisers…!
So I took her to the car park, having already taken the stabilisers off at home; taking some tools in case we needed to put them back on (even temporarily for confidence building).
In event nothing was needed.
I learned between Charlie and Ollie’s training that holding onto the bike prevented the kid from feeling the bike wobble, which in turn meant they couldn’t learn to overcome or correct it.
So all I was doing for Bea was holding onto the scruff of her neck. If she fell I could save her from a heavy fall, but fall she still would.
Harsh? Not a bit of it. On her third go I realised that today was the day she was going to succeed – no doubt in my mind.
Was I being pushy? Absolutely not! She wanted this and was apparently very ready (probably a number of weeks ago too).
You can see three videos below – the first is THE first time I let go of her. At 45seconds into the clip she asked if she could stop, so I let go of her; she didn’t even register.
The second video has a wobble in it that she recovers really nicely from, and is so full of beans I asked her a question about her riding – she is so enthusiastic it’s gorgeous.
The third video is all her. I am barely touching her at the start, and stand stationary so am forced to let go the moment she has momentum. You see her go round and round and round and then brake and come to a stop without any tumble or drama. Properly impressive.
That’s all very well – I’ve shared the very best bits – what this hides are the tumbles, pain and tears.
One big tumble was as a result of her trying to look behind to see if I was still holding onto her (I wasn’t) – the act caused a whole body swerve and a heavy fall.
She had a number of other crashes – some I could catch and some I wasn’t quite close enough to.
One almost-crash occurred as she rode towards the village hall; amazingly she realised her error and calmly pulled the brakes and stopped. I was going so fast to catch her, I almost trampled her – such was the surprise that she controlled the bike effortlessly to a standstill.
Her helmet peak took a number of whacks, so did both knees and both palms. One crash saw her chin get a whack.
I sat cuddling a crying child almost as much as I jogged after a speeding giggling child!
We were in excess of two hours doing lap upon lap.
When we finally got back home, Bea took her stabilisers into Mummy and stated quite clearly that they were for the bin as she no longer needed them!!!
