Dear Lexi,
You are officially a two-wheel bike riding machine! About a month or two ago, we bought a bike for you. Previously, you had a strider bike, but never really got into it. You kind of understood the balance thing, but were essentially too tall for it.
Your new bike came with training wheels. Previously, I didn’t even want you to try it with those because I just new you would become attached to them and never build up the confidence to learn to ride without. However, we did let you ride with them on to get you used to the idea of pedaling and learning how to turn while pedaling.
You got the hang of it pretty quick so we removed the training wheels and you were so scared and never wanted to ride. So we put the wheels back on, but put them up pretty high to force you to learn to balance. This worked as you learned pretty quickly to ride on the main two wheels. However, when you did shift your weight a little to rely on the trainers, it was too much of a shift and you would often tip over. So the wheels came off again and we would hold onto the back of the seat and run next to you while you pedaled. You did awesome going down hills, but would often stop pedaling when on flat ground or up hills and tip.
Fortunately, we had just watched Finding Dory and there was a quote Dory would repeat ‘Just keep swimming, just keep swimming’ so we started saying that ‘Just keep pedaling’ to keep you going. As soon as you figured that out, it was a cake walk for you! You’re still a little shaky on your steering, but you can get yourself going and stop all by yourself!
There was also a little bit of bribery that went into this too 🙂 We promised to take you to the Ice Cream Factory when you learned, AND i let you pick out a new Shopkins, which was really the icing on the cake.
I also realized you need some tough love to give you the confidence to do new and scarier things like this. Daddy always made much more progress when he worked with you. When I would work with you, there was lots of ‘I can’t’ and excuses and whining and I just can’t put up with any of it or show remorse to you as it just feeds into it. You really need me to be tough with you.
Regardless, so happy and proud of you Lexi!!
Way to go!
Love,
Mama
Peanut Smiles 