An Awesome Start, A Crash Landing Middle and a Proud Finale.

As I watched Jack ride his bike yesterday, I realized how confident he had become over the last year. So today, I mentioned to him very nonchalantly that maybe we should take off his training wheels. Surprisingly, he was all for it! Before we all could give it a second thought, Pat was taking off the training wheels while Jack was grinning with excitement. Here we go...there's not turning back now!

We took him to a school park by our house that has a perfect place to teach a 5 year-old how to ride a bike sans training wheels...a soccer field.

Pat's advice to Jack was "just keep pedaling" and my advice to him was "just keep telling yourself, I think I can..I think I can..I think I can".

And he's off...

He got up on his first try!

He rode until he got to the soccer net and then wasn't sure what to do, so he hopped off his bike.

 But, he got right back on his bike and rode to the opposite soccer net with Pat, Owen and I cheering him on.

He was doing so well that we decided to move to the empty parking lot so he would have a harder surface to practice on. I watched him do a couple of loops and my confidence in him was souring, so I let Pat take over and I took Owen to play on the playground. 

But wait...

About 5 minutes later, I heard a crash and a loud, screaming cry. Jack's loud, screaming cry to be exact. He had turned a corner a little too sharp and ran right into the light post just hard enough that he fell off his bike and scrapped his elbow. He was upset, scared and D-O-N-E with the bike riding and there was no convincing him otherwise. Luckily, there was the playground to take his mind off the crash for awhile because we were standing by our, "you have to get back on after you fall off". He wiped his tears, played and laughed with Owen and quickly got over it. Ufta!

Then we bribed him (you just have to sometimes!) with anything he wanted from Dairy Queen if he rode his bike one more time. He took the bait happily and rode his bike all around the parking lot a couple of more times.

He regained his confidence in riding his bike and was able to enjoy his triple scoop ice cream cone with a cherry on top.

I'm so unbelievably proud of him!

Now, we will see how tomorrow goes...