Thursday, May 15, 2008

It's just like riding a bike, it's easy...

Maxine has never been what I'd term "athletic". What she doesn't have in athletic ability, she makes up for in stubbornness. Most of her friends have been riding bikes without their training wheels for a while now and she was always too afraid to take them off. Anna, who's staying with us for the week, wanted to get her bike and ride it yesterday. So we got her bike and she was riding it around and Maxine said she REALLY wanted to take her training wheels off. So I put Juliet and Jack down for a nap and we took off one training wheel. She rode around like that for about 15 minutes and then we took the other one off. She was pretty shaky and crying, so I asked if she wanted to take a rest but she wouldn't give up. She started the adventure in flip flops and a skirt but the outfit evolved into pants, tennis shoes and gloves. So I ran behind her for an hour, trying to help her get the feel for it. Then, Juliet woke up so I had to go inside. Maxine insisted that she wanted to stay out and practice. She practised starting off a million times and went a little farther each time. She fell a couple times but she started to get really good! We came outside and helped her practise some more and then I went inside to start dinner. She kept at it and by the end of the day, she looked like this:

She still needs to learn to brake a little. I can't believe how fast she improved! She went from scared and sobbing on her bike to singing and confident in one afternoon!














In this picture, she told me that she loves to ride her bike more than anything else! The wind was blowing so her hair is in her face a bit. The wind actually helped because it'd push her and help her get started.
When Merril got home, we all played outside until dark.
He got new biking shoes so he was trying them out. Maxine kept yelling at him because she was afraid he'd "crush her bike to little pieces." Looks like a clown bike with Merril riding. Looking at the pictures now, we might have to invest in a bigger bike because that one looks so small. So yeah, I'm very proud of her and her stubborn streak. :)
P.S. Merril told me while reading my blog that I'd misspelled 'practised'. I went to edit my blog and ran spellchecker and it didn't catch it. So I looked it up online and found that 'practised' and 'practiced' are both considered correct spellings. Kind of like 'grey' and 'gray' are both correct. Who knew?
P.P.S. Funny thing. Maxine's friend, Jocelyn, learned to ride her bike without training wheels the exact same day. Her Mom blogged an almost identical post. Click here http://amyhummel.typepad.com to see it.

4 comments:

Amy Hummel said...

I'm laughing out of my chair about this! Why??? There must be something in the air because we did the exact same thing with Jocelyn yesterday! And I'm actually on-line uploading pictures and video to post! LOL, how funny is that?!

Except I don't think my video and pictures will make it to my blog until quite a bit later because I have a crying little girl at my feet...

But we started with Kate actually yesterday. Then Jocelyn decided that if Kate was learning, she would learn too. But now Kate doesn't have any interest in learning, and Jocelyn is obsessed with it! She's learning on Katelyn's bike because it is lower to the ground and easier for her to handle. But last night she could go a few feet at a time... and now this morning she can ride around and around the circle in front of our house without stopping. It's amazing how fast they learn once it clicks, huh!

Corbett Family said...

We just got J.D. a bigger bike (with more wobbly training wheels) so we could pass his old one on to Jake. He was sobbing at the store about the wobbly training wheels, but then when I told him we were going back the next day with Daddy to look at the bike again before buying it, he freaked out that we weren't leaving the store with the bike. I told him he needed wobbly training wheels to help him learn to ride it without them at all. I'll have to show him the video of Maxine riding without training wheels to give him inspiration.

Brooke said...

Tell Merril that he needs to get a bigger bike! Just kidding, thats awesome she picked it up so fast! Its amazing how we can try to talk them into doing something they don't want to do and they won't budge, but the minute they decide to do it themselves its a piece of cake. Kids are the best.

Beka said...

Way to go Maxine! That baby's got gumption! (Speaking of spelling, I have no idea if I spelled that wright...right...whatever:D )