Over the years, the Easter holiday has become the traditional point at which training wheels are removed from the kids’ bikes. This year was to be no different with Emily having reached the point where that freedom was ready to be experienced.
Unlike her brothers, Emily had had something of a head start. When the boys took off on their first momentous journey down the grassy slope, they were experiencing two wheel freedom for the first time. Emily had the advantage of a couple of drive-way forays with either Caroline or myself dutifully tagging along behind to catch her when the balance failed.
And unlike her brothers, who spent days here before suffering through various degrees of cajoling, coaxing and encouragement to get them to allow me to remove the wheels, Emily was as keen as mustard.
Initially, upon our arrival, she was just keen to have me ride around the single circuit that makes up the caravan park whilst she rolled along with the training wheels in place. But after a single circuit with her it became evident that the noise of the plastic wheels on the rough and aged bitumen was going to quickly lead to early onset insanity. So I suggested that we remove the wheels. Glee ensued.
This of course meant that rather than riding around the park with her, I was reduced to jogging along behind her, occasionally catching her as she wobbled excessively or alternately just telling her to watch where she was going. For someone that was riding on two wheels for essentially the first time, she had an amazing propensity to turn her head at 90 degrees (or more) to the direction which she was travelling so that she could talk to me about how well she was doing!
She’s taken to the bike beautifully and its now become a not uncommon sight to see the little pink thing trundling along on her little pink bike calling out “Hello!” or “Look how clever I am!” to random strangers about the park whilst one or two cars crawl along behind her, waiting for a chance to get past!
Its amazing just how quickly she went from needing someone to help her start to pushing herself along with one foot until she rolled enough to lift both of them off the ground and start pedalling!
That first night, I was sitting watching the world pass, the sun having already set, thinking that the kids were just about ready for bed when to my utter amazement, around the corner came Emily on her bike, happily just going for a quick little ride in the dark!
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