Bike Riding

 Ever since the end of the tour, the boys interest in riding their bikes has taken off. 

 Dominic will ride his bike up and down our street for as long as he can find someone else to ride with him.  He was picking his shirts based on jerseys from the Tour, but then a couple of weeks ago he picked a shirt I hadn't seen him wear in a long time.  Eric had to point out to me that he was wearing his version of Team Sky's gear.  

 William is happy to ride bikes, but got frustrated that he couldn't keep up.  We explained that his training wheels were slowing him down a bit.  Thus, he needed to learn to balance on two wheels. 

 

Due to Molly, I was not that interested in working with Will during the week to get him ready to ride on two wheels, but from the time he started using training wheels a little over a month ago, I talked to him about listening for whether he could hear his training wheels or not.  If he couldn't hear them, he was balancing.  So a week ago when he was really frustrated with his four-wheeler, I told him that he should practice all week to not hear his training wheels.  And every afternoon I could see the look of concentration on his face as he road around our circle.  If anyone is familiar with "The Music Man", I'm thinking about marketing my teaching technique as the 'think system'.  Yesterday, Eric took off the training wheels and Will took off.  He fell a few times, but had pretty amazing balance for a first timer on 2-wheels.  By the afternoon, he was racing up and down the street with Dom.  And Dom was thrilled to have someone as excited to time trial as he was. 

I just took these pictures on Friday, August 2nd.  I didn't realize they would be out of date in less than 24 hours.

Oh, and we got a pretty cool package in the mail from Grandma who took a trip to London earlier this month.  Molly sort of confiscated Will's shirt for her own, but Will didn't seem to mind.  I think the tutu really makes the outfit, don't you?

It was a very exciting Saturday for everyone.  And now I'll leave you with these pictures.  Most of them are repeats from Facebook, but perhaps they are new to you. 

Dom and Will opening their totally awesome and cool Messi Football Jerseys (that would be soccer for my American friends).

It's an interesting turn of events.  A couple of months ago I wrote about how Will had his tricycle stolen.  If that hadn't happen, we would not have moved him to a bike for months.  And here he is riding a two-wheeler just a couple of weeks after he turned 5.  I just re-read that post to the boys and saw I predicted he'd be riding a two-wheeler within the year, and, technically I was correct.  I just grossly underbid my son's hand.  (Bridge reference for Ann Strunk).