Comments Off on Another first… for more than just Bea… Roller blading!
As an Xmas present Bea received some wonderfully pink roller blades. Yet more perfectly they are the same make as knee, elbow and (as yet unused) wrist protectors we bought for cycling. So with Bea super keen to get to use them out of doors, it somehow seemed appropriate for me to purchase some Daddy sized blades and have a go myself!
I have a sneaky feeling that Bea was doing better than me as I was being quite slow and tip toed about back in the same car park where we learned to cycle all those months ago.
See for yourself. The first video is early on in the session. The second video is 30mins later and you can clearly see how fast her confidence has grown, despite the crash at the end. You’ll be pleased to hear she got up, we brushed her down, made her laugh, and off she went again. 🙂
So having started school in September Bea has done amazingly well – not that any of this is a surprise, she takes more than most 4yr olds take in their stride like it’s normal.
So when she performed in the school’s Christmas nativity as a sheep, not only did she learn all the moves she was the only reception child that was able to perform them all!
I was a little far away, but she is the middle sheep on the hard right of the stage here:
Comments Off on Sunshine – first motorbike and bouncy castle
The sun came! Of course this meant Daddy had no excuses and finally mowed the lawn. This revealed the lawn as a suitable playground for a day of hooning about and Bea lapped it up. Mostly.
Having worked out how to pedal a bicycle without stabilisers and recently enjoying being ridden about on some dirt motorbikes, I asked her if she would like to learn how to ride a motorbike on her own. She of course jumped at the chance and was almost outside before the question was finished, such was her excitement.
Having managed to calm her down, put on her new elbow and knee pads, plus mitts and helmet from cycling, coupled with some proper motorbike boots, that were once her brothers, we were ready. Unfortunately the little pw50 motorbike had other ideas – I had forgotten to drain the carb at last use (last year) so it refused to fire, so we had to strip the seat off, remove the carburettor and get the crud out of the float bowl – she thought it was all very entertaining, and hearing a four year old say carburettor so clearly will stay with me for a good while. We discussed the explosion of the engine; she was very inquisitive. Eventually the little bike fired and we were ready.
We did a few careful laps with both of us on the bike – yes, it does struggle with my weight on it, but once rolling you can get yourself into trouble, especially given my legs were bent double just staying on the damn thing!
I encouraged her to pull the throttle with me standing behind her, and she did a little bit. What I was most impressed with was her ability to listen and she shut the throttle when approaching a wall, and pulled the brakes; later even instinctively putting a foot down. I managed to let go of her a couple of times, but didn’t linger away from the bike, just in case she pulled the throttle the wrong way. She was doing so well, that when Mummy came out to see, she shouted for Mummy to stop and watch – filled with such excitement she pulled the throttle a little too hard, kept it open and crashed into a low wall. All of the armour she had on worked well. The only injury (mostly shock) was her left thigh that took the weight of the little bike and didn’t have any protection beyond some leggings. She of course cried and with both parents on site in a second, she was scooped up and checked for damage. She was fine, and Daddy even rode off and crashed to show that everyone crashes at some point. She laughed. We were going to be ok.
Later in the afternoon we had another go, and she had lots more confidence, but not enough to yank the throttle wide open. She kept wanting to stop and chat (clearly comfortable being on the bike) – we talked about butterflies and flowers and trees over the noise of the bike ticking over. We even parked the bike on the swing frame and swang ourselves silly whilst continuing to chat freely. In a quiet moment she even asked, “Daddy, what are you thinking about?“!!
Eventually she was taking the corners, and I was nervous of the edges of the lawn and the drop to the patio below, so held on tight. She eventually pulled the throttle too hard and was heading towards a parked spade, not too far from the wall edge, so I yanked the back wheel off the ground to arrest her progress. The spade went over. She laughed and confirmed. “it doesn’t matter Daddy; I’m fine“. Unfortunately I had twinged my back a little and with sweat pouring down my face from all the running around and lifting the back of the bike, was running out of steam. We had one more run where she crashed into a wall, again laughing while I pulled backwards to overcome the forward force of the rear wheel, and that was enough.
I managed to convince her it was time to quit, and decided to pull out the bouncy castle and inflated it much to her delight. The castle is quite quite tired with lots of holes throughout so isn’t efficient and collapses under my weight – Bea is fine on her own though, so spent the next 45minutes clambering round the back, over the integral climbing wall and throwing herself down the slide entry chute.
All in all an amazing day – Mummy took her for a trip to see the lambs in the back field and she stuffed her face really quickly and well at dinner time. She squeezed both Mummy and Daddy intensely hard at bedtime, big kiss and then dropped off straight to sleep exhausted apparently!
Here are a couple of videos of her motorcycling and bouncy castle antics:
Comments Off on Bea’s 2nd PROPER bike ride – MUDDY!
Bea was keen to go for a “big girl’s ride” again, so decided to find another bridleway that was a little quieter, and hopefully simpler to navigate, and maybe with some gentle slopes in. Found a good route that was far enough away to mean the bike rack was needed on the car.
I put on my proper bike gear, and found some old cycling shorts from one of the boys for Bea – with proper padding in!
Bea is getting better at the braking – I’ve been teaching her to “weeeee” down hills with her feet off the pedals so she can get the feeling of adjusting the brake pressure rather than just jamming them on to stop quickly. Gradually getting there on a couple of the hills here.
She found some of the ride hard, made harder mostly by her desire to ride through the centre of EVERY puddle. Whilst it was funny getting sprayed (I was behind) with mud off her rear wheel, there were a couple of tumble moments when the bike just stopped as she hit the mud. One time she went over the bars, and both brakes got buried in the slime.
Not quite as far as last weekend’s ride of 4miles, but there were slopes, tunnels and ditches to navigate and avoid; she pulled an amazing emergency stop when she wobbled towards a ditch – I was super impressed her reaction was to jam on both brakes and she stopped herself from going over. We managed a little over 2 miles, and I think she was more exhausted than last week!
Managed to get the Garmin GPS watch working and was able to track our route here:
Here’s a little YouTube video taken as we were “weeeeee-ing” down the road to the car:
Mummy and Daddy (mostly Mummy) have been caring for a little girl who has had a bad earache for a week now – every two hours she is in agony – just what any little person needs on their birthday!
Still, as expected, Bea just cracked on with it, crying when she needed to and bouncing around like a happy monkey when the medicine had kicked in.
We had decided a new “big girls” bed was needed, and despite our best efforts kept coming back to the biggest and most expensive bed we could find, eventually biting the bullet/wallet and ordering it AND TWO mattresses… more on that shortly.
Daddy worked from home on her birthday (formally taking a half day holiday for all those people who are screaming “ShirkingFromHome!”), and built the bed whilst she was with Grammie.
Aside from running her to the Doctors for a quick check up we managed to get the bed up, and the room tidied for her arrival.
Mummy came up with the idea to wrap the door (how much wrapping paper does a bed need…?!?!), so in the video below we see Bea all very excited and then super happy when she clambers aboard. I love the bit where she thinks the pull-out trundle/sleepover bed is in case she falls out… clever thinking!! 🙂
It was the last weekend in September that Bea “sussed” cycling on her first attempt without stabilisers; was interested if she could do it again, and hopefully with less crashing.
On Saturday we went back to the same car park and concentrated on her starting off without any assistance. Noticed that she was more confident – not overly so – and was able to “save” several crashes. Unfortunately she did eventually crash, and tears flowed once more. I convinced her that the “saves” were really important and showed her she was getting better and was learning really well!
We did upload a video from this Saturday session, but knowing it ended with a rather nasty crash have decided not to share it.
What was lovely about Saturday is I took my bike and we were riding around together – our first bike ride, even if it was a little broken up.
On Sunday the weather remained amazing (11th Oct) so found another car park on an industrial estate that had no traffic. Also it was paved rather than tarmac. Potentially offering a slightly more uneven surface. Found a little “sub” car park that had kerbs all round giving Bea a little boundary, which we eventually played with… more on that shortly.
We had been trying to have Bea push off by putting the leading pedal in the “go position”. On Saturday I had explained to her that a bicycle could ride itself if you could trick it into speeding along. I was wondering if she could paddle herself along, gather some speed and then put her feet on the pedals. Never worked on Saturday, but made a sideways comment about that on Sunday and she rather impressively took to it on her own with almost zero extra coaching. You can see a couple of videos below of her using this technique.
Sunday’s session was impressive for a few reasons:
Only ONE crash – she looked down to ring the bell!
Rings the bell merrily whilst racing around giggling!
Starts entirely on her own with no outside assistance.
Accurate pavement riding (eventually!)
Did her first trick!!
The pavement riding was interesting because she asked to ride up on there and I explained she would have to be really accurate to avoid some metal bicycle racks on one side, a lamppost on the other and the kerb drop-off – that’s before we get to the bend and the slope back down into the car park.
She of course managed this easily. She then wanted to do this in reverse. I explained the only way to do that was ride really fast up the slope onto the pavement, carefully around the bend and then do a “trick” by riding off of the pavement. Dutifully and with no drama she did it. And did it again. And again. Had to catch her a couple of times as she turned into the corner too early – on the second go she asked why that was happening – I explained it was because she had ridden up the slope too slowly so was a little wobbly. She soon fixed that!
Anyway, summary is I cannot believe she is barely 3yrs and 8months old and has such confidence on a bicycle. She needs to improve her stopping ability, and of course accuracy, but these are things that will come. She is realising the importance of both on her own, so I think we will increase the complexity (she’s not really done hills – up or down – both bring challenges of their own), and we will eventually go out for a proper bike ride!
Here she is demonstrating her confidence:
Here she nearly crashes into me (you can see the pavement and bicycle racks in the background):
Properly in control here of both the start and the stop:
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!!!
Comments Off on Early morning tummy slide action!!
Charlie wanted an early trip out to the airfield so on the way back we swung past the local playground.
After 15mins on a swing, a potty stop, another 10mins on swing we requested some slide action.
She chose to go down the slide on her tummy which I’ve never seen her do before of her own accord, so second time caught the following video of the action:
![IMAG1000_1[1]](http://kevinclaire.com/beatrice/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMAG1000_11.jpg)
