like riding a bike.

Amelia has been wanting to learn to ride a bike for a long time now. We tried the "balance method" of removing the pedals on her bike over a year ago but her bike was too big. We pulled out her smaller bike but it needed new tires. And then we just kind of abandoned the process. I think we were dreading it a bit. Amelia can be difficult to teach. She wants to do things perfectly the first time and it can get a bit dramatic (we're still having a major struggle with monkey bars.) We FINALLY got a new tire on her small bike a few weeks ago and had her start riding it without the pedals and training wheels to get the feel for balancing a bike. Saturday afternoon, while Elsa was at a birthday party, we took Amelia out with her bigger bike to see how she would do.

We expected this to be a long process. Multiple practice sessions. And definitely some tears. We were shocked when she was riding on her own within five minutes. No tears. No injuries (which is good since we completely forgot about her helmet). No drama. I was really happy to see her have such confidence in herself. And after about 30 minutes, she was starting and stopping on her own.

And that was it. She can ride a bike. And we're happily checking it off our parent to-do list. We celebrated with pumpkin donuts at Krispy Kreme.

I didn't have my camera so this was all documented with various hipster iphone apps.
(Amelia requested that I make a movie of her riding and put a song in the background. It's a bit lengthy at 2 minutes, but you can enjoy one of my favorite Decemberists songs.)