Once you learn to ride a bike...

First time parents of any child have certain expectations that may in time have seemed a tad...shall we say....ambitious. It's not our fault. We have no idea, generally, of when certain developmental milestones are supposed to be met. Like, for instance, your child's ability to learn to ride a bike. I think we purchased Aria and Elijah's first tricycle when they were about 1 1/2. At one point, due to various donations by well meaning neighbors and friends, we might have had something like five different kinds of tricycles. We didn't expect that at such a young age they would immediately take off down the street, so we were content to simply push them along...and they were content for us to do that too. Three years and probably five more tricycles later we were still pushing them. In fact, for reasons I can not explain, Aria and Elijah NEVER learned to ride a tricycle. A year and a half ago, we gave up on tricycles and just went and purchased bikes with training wheels. Somewhere deep inside of me a doubt was lurking. I was losing faith that my beautiful and able bodied first born children would EVER ride a bike. This was shocking for me because I spent most of my childhood riding around the neighborhood and all over town on a bike.
We took training wheels off, we put training wheels back on, we pushed them and encouraged them, we drove ourselves MAD, we shook our heads and wondered where we had failed as parents. And you know what happened? That's right...about two months ago Aria taught HERSELF how to ride a bike. Then about a month later Elijah followed suit. That's just how it all goes down in the Carson household. No amount of encouraging (aka pressuring) or threatening on our part is as effective as when Aria decides she is GOING to do something. Then, once she has conquered it Elijah sees that it can be done and he does it to. Then Rowan, who has been watching everything from the sidelines, skips several steps in normal toddler development and stuns us all by joining in (no, he is not riding a bike...but a tricycle...YES!)Let that be a lesson...to us!