**Since I'm just starting my blogsite, many of these posts will not be in any kind of order.**
5/23/2008
Katie has been a proficient bike rider for quite some time now, so it was the natural order of events that the training wheels would soon be history. I think she was more ready for it than we were; she begged us for the longest time to take them off. I was definitely thinking I would need to buy stock in Band-Aids, but she surprised us and took off with no problem at all!
Claire was a whole different story. The over-protective mother in me balked at the thought of a legally blind child riding a bike. We did the larger tricycle, the Big Wheel, but they just didn't cut it for Claire. She wanted a big bike. After showing us that she could handle riding her sister's bike (with training wheels at that point) and talking to her ophthalmologist, we decided we would get her the bike for her 9th birthday. Before Chris could even take the wrench out of the tool chest to put the training wheels on, she took off on the bike! That child amazes me! She fell a couple of times, but she is tough, so she'd get up and get right back on the bike. So, no training wheels were even needed for Claire. They are both now very adept at bike riding and we have gone on a couple family treks with mom and dad, both at home and at the beach.
