Ticket to Ride

This kid is proud of himself... and rightly so!

Today he ditched the training wheels!

I had plans for this to happen over the holidays (which start in a week).  There was going to be subtle hints at how much fun it would be to ride without training wheels, discussions about friends that are now on two wheels, that sort of thing.  Then, this afternoon we took the boys to the park for a ride and after about 30 seconds one of Lion's training wheels broke... Uh Oh!

I knew he wasn't a fan of getting rid of them because he had told me so a few times.  I was pretty sure it was just to do with the tricks he could do while he had them on and not a fear of falling off or not being able to use just two wheels.  Thankfully, just this morning a friend told me that her daughter, a friend of Lion's, had just taken off her training wheels (YAY Emily!) so when he said he didn't want the broken wheel taken off, he wanted it fixed, we told him the exciting news about Emily and how much fun she has on her two wheeler and he thought that maybe it might be okay... then he changed his mind... then he changed it back... then, well, you get the idea.  So Wolf just took the bike back to Grandma's and took off the training wheels.

"You're holding on aren't you Daddy?"

"Keep pedaling"

"You're doing it!"... "WHAT? Am I?"

"I AM, I'M RIDING BY MYSELF!!!"

There was no stopping him then!  I think if we had let him, he would have ridden off into the sunset.

The reason we had actually gone to that park for it's good bike tracks was so that Dragon could have a burl on his new bike!  His little buddy J-Mac happened to have two bikes the same size so when I mentioned that we needed to move Dragon up from his trike Queen Stuss offered one of J-Mac's bikes.  Dragon thought it was the most wonderful thing J-Mac had ever done for him and could not believe that he didn't need to give the bike back... it was really his!  He told everyone he saw that his friend J-Mac had given him a big boy bike and it was for him and it was red (orange) and his friend J-Mac had given it to him and he could keep it and and and and and...

Here it is...

He's pretty proud of himself too!

He was so worn out after riding this one because a) he has to do all the work for himself, no parent handle on this big boy bike. b) the trike pedals are designed to be easier to push for kids, this has regular bike pedals with an up/down motion instead of an out the front pushing motion.

I know he was pleased with himself because when he's feeling like that he turns into a bit of a clown so we see lots of this...

(I've been told he looks like me more than the others, what do you think?)

Also lots of this...

Crazy kid.

So what was Monkey doing while all this bike riding was happening?

He was digging into the choc chip fudge cookies of course!

A walk in the park

Here is the last of our ANZAC day trip to the park. We tried to get the boys to have their photo taken in front of the memorial but only Lion would cooperate. He wouldn't take his helmet off though, "Army men wear 'helments' mum".

He was facing me telling me something of great importance when I took this photo but that boy moves FAST! I like the shot I got though. This helmet was a gift from a guy that owns a skate shop in the same complex as the shop Wolf manages and I used to work in. He thought it was great that I ended up with a daredevil son and gave Lion a personalised skateboard and this helmet for his second Christmas. Yes, Lion was only 15 months old at the time. Skateshopman thought it was great. Lion thought it was great. Mummy McT will concede that it was very thoughtful of him to include a helmet for Lion's safety.

Lion had a blast being free to ride his bike along the paths on his big boy bike.

Lion started up here and felt that he had to assure me that "I'm not afraid of heights mum".

And of course, monkey see, monkey do.

I was trying to get a photo of the boys in this lovely garden path area but they just would not stay still! Too much to do, too little time.