Bicycle! Bicycle!

Littletree has been hankering for a new bike for aaaaaaages.

She got her previous (first) bicycle when she was four, and has long since grown out of it. A bigger bike was found second hand at an op-shop, but it needed a lot of fixing and really wasn’t worth the effort. So meanwhile, it’s been months and months since Littletree could go cycling with the other neighbourhood scamps, and I’ve been putting her off, saying “oh, we’ll just get that old bike going” or “we can’t afford a new bike right now, you’ll just have to wait”.

Then last week Littletree and I went for a trip to the city with Lady Demelza in search of a new mini-oven for her and Uncle CJ to have in the flat downstairs, and lo! It turns out that one can just buy brand new, shiny bicycles for only $80 in Kmart.

And I thought – what’s wrong with me that I can’t just buy my kid a bicycle – every kid needs a bike, and all the other kids are out riding. It’s not like she wants an xBox or what-have-you (I’m not entirely sure she knows what an xBox is – come to think of it, I’m a bit hazy on that myself).

So we got a brand new bike. Littletree was so excited. The look on her face totally reminded me of when I got my first new bike for my birthday, I think it was my 10th – a real “grown-up” bicycle, it was purple, with gears and everything!

And as with most cheap things these days, the bike needed to be assembled, but thank the goddess, Uncle CJ brought his tool kit with him (because I don’t happen to own any tools at all any more) and he was handy enough to help Littletree put it all together.

Littletree even got to learn about Allen Keys

And the result:

Awesome!

She’s been out riding around the neighbourhood with her friends almost every day this week!

Wheelie Fun

This week’s home school group met at the skate park in town for a ‘fun with wheels’ day.

 

Littletree got out her rollerskates – it was the first time she got a really good go of riding them around in a big space

The kids all had a great time on the jumps

Rollerskates, rollerblades, bikes and scooters

And of course just running around and having a great time

And the best part: having the whole park to ourselves while most children are in school :P

Cycles of Life

Littletree can now officially ride a bicycle on her own!

The trick of taking the pedals off worked a treat. I can’t believe it was barely a month ago that we took the pedals and training wheels off, and about 2 weeks ago we put the pedals back on!

It really was I guess three and a half weeks of riding maybe 20 minutes 2-3 times a week to go from barely able to ride even with training wheels to being a fully independent bicycle rider :)

We spent the last 10 days or so riding with me holding on to the handlebars to help Littletree balance while she got the hang of it, and slowly letting go, and then one day, she did it!

She’s so excited to be riding, and gets better and better at it every day.

 

Look Mama! No Feet!

We finally took the training wheels of Littletree’s bike! And the pedals.

That might sound a little strange, but I have come to realise that training wheels were a really bad idea. After two years of riding this bike, she still couldn’t really ride effectively, even *with* the training wheels on.

This is a kid who could, sitting on her bike, with training wheels, perfectly still, on flat ground, not going anywhere, and still manage to fall off and topple the whole bike over.

Basically, training wheels mean that you can never get the hang of balancing. I found out in Europe it’s common to get training bikes that don’t have any pedals – kids who are just about big enough to start riding get these bikes and just coast along on their feet. Thus they learn to balance, and how to lean into curves, which is the tricky part. Then they get onto a pedal bike and can ride pretty much right away.

So after many long discussions, and another agonising play-date with friends who can ride normal bikes, Littletree agreed that she wanted to take off both the training wheels and the pedals.

 

She was a bit wobbly at first, but in the distance from our house to the village – about 500M, she made more progress at riding than she has in the past 2 years on training wheels!

Yay!

We think that after a week of riding days, she’ll be ready for pedals again and a fully-fledged cyclist :D Then I reckon she’ll be ready to move into her own apartment ;)