Almost... half... way

May is here. I can't believe it's been over 3 months since Nic left. In some ways, the time has just flown by, while some days just don't seem to end.  It's been a good 3 months though - one thing I promised myself when he left was not to spend my time wasting days away until he came home; instead, living for today and not for August.  So the kids and I stay busy - the days that seem the longest are the days when we have nothing planned.  But thankfully, those days are few and far between.

May should stay pretty busy.  And in the beginning of June, my sister Solveig will come - all four of us are so excited for that!  She'll stay until the end of July and then it'll only be a few weeks until Nic comes home. Our half-way point is coming up soon and it feels good to almost be counting down, as opposed to counting up.

One thing we've been working on is getting Maximus to ride his bike, sans training wheels.  I did some research and found there are two ways to learn how to ride a bike: 1) Learn how to peddle first and balance second (training wheels) or 2) Learn how to balance first and then peddle.  With the second option, you take the peddles off the bike and make sure your child's feet touch the ground flat (you can buy special bikes made for this purpose, but 1)they're expensive and 2) they don't ship here).  Your child then uses their feet to push themselves around on the bike - eventually lifting their feet once they gain momentum and balancing while they "ride" the bike.  Once they've mastered that, you put the peddles back on and they learn how to peddle.

So I liked option 2.  It seemed more natural.  Training wheels just seems like a lazy parenting way to get your kid to ride a bike....which I'm guilty of doing ... but then I realized that Maximus wasn't learning how to ride a bike with his training wheels, because a bike with training wheels is not a bike.  Besides, it's near impossible to turn a bike when it has training wheels on it without falling over.

So since Maximus' bike was too tall for him to have his feet flat on the ground, I bought a bike for Colton, took the training wheels off, took the peddles off and said they could ride it in the house.  At first Maximus was furious at me.  But that was only because he didn't understand what it meant to balance on the bike.  He would get so frustrated.  But after a couple days, he would sit on that bike and "walk" around the house on it.  Eventually, he started pushing himself off with his feet, lifting them up and balancing as he went 5-10 feet at a time.  After a while I thought he might be ready to try to use the peddles. So I put them back on.

We went up to the playground (it's always deserted) because the ground is squishy and there's open space.  I held on to his back to help him balance while he figured out the peddling again and once he gained momentum, I'd let go - and off he'd go.  Riding his bike.  He took several falls, but we laughed them off and he eventually didn't need me to help him at all.

Now, he's riding HIS bike (Colton's is too short for his legs when he peddles) and he never needs my help.  He looks like such a big boy outside riding his bike all by himself.  I'm a little proud, too - how many other preschoolers do you know that can ride a bike? :)

As a side note, Colton was very excited that I bought him a bike and then decided he was too little for it.  I'm thinking next spring he'll be ready to start learning how to balance - his legs aren't quite long enough yet.

I'll add something on Elora - she absolutely loves her Daddy Doll and likes to take him everywhere.  It's very sweet :)