{training wheels}

We spent a good part of our weekend teaching the girls to ride their bikes. Ryan and I have been feeling the urgency to get rid of Emma's training wheels for a while now, but she hasn't been the most coordinated little girl and since Claire still can't ride a tricycle, it's kind of hard to have three kids that need constant hands on them and only two sets of hands to do it. Well, after I saw a friend's three year old son riding his bike without training wheels, we sucked it up and had bike riding bootcamp this weekend. Emma and Madeline both rocked it! They can both ride on their own now for longer and longer stretches. Emma still gets frustrated getting herself started and Madeline gets lazy and doesn't want to peddle after the first few minutes which causes her to slow down and crash, but for the the most part they've got it. Woohoo!!! A few more grueling sessions (do you know HOW hard it is to let go of your baby's arm when you know that she is going to come crashing down ten seconds after you do?) and they will be pros:) The funniest part of all was how different the girls were in their reactions to the process. Emma would fall down and start crying and yelling at us something like "Hello? Do you not care about the person that is FALLING? I'm a person here. This is your fault. You made me fall!". Madeline would fall down a second later and start cracking up and wave her hands in the air and scream "I'm OK!!". Night and day, these two. I love each of them for the differences they have and for the parts of their personalities that make them unique. Emma has always been unsure of herself, so even though she was doing great at riding her bike, she saw all of her falls as failure and was looking for someone to blame to make herself feel better. Madeline wants more than anything in the world to be just like Emma and to do the things that Emma does, so even though she fell along the way, she couldn't get over how proud she was for the things that she did accomplish. Navigating the emotions of three little girls can be exhausting! So proud of my girls, though, for conquering training wheels and can't wait for lots of family bike rides this fall!

xoxo,
ali