Life Without Training Wheels

I don't even know what is considered normal about taking the training wheels off, which is pretty crazy considering the amount of time I spend reading parenting articles.

Bobby's training wheel literally broke off last week so the boys helped their dad fix up both bikes, air up the tires, add a little elbow grease and Bobby assured us he was ready for the next step.

I remember when my parents removed the training wheels off my hot pink Barbie bike that had those really cool plastic streamers on the handle bars. I think I was a little older than Bobby and I wobbled up and down the sidewalk, crashing right into our neighbors Buick (?) on the street.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when Bobby tried out his bike. Fear, because Robbie said we should have him try in the backyard which you'll observe has a whole wall of hea- splitting retaining wall rocks. Bobby leaned a lot on his feet and cautiously started circling, crashing a few times into our house (no broken windows, thank goodness), into Shane who thought it was a race that he was miraculously winning for once, and into a bush.

Other than that, the transition was really anticlimactic. He had the riding down in less than ten minutes and my video taping resulted in some boring laps around the grass. Maybe we waited too long to take the training wheels off?

Most likely, I didn't want to see him grow out of them. It's already been a huge year with kindergarten starting and I don't know how much of my boys growing out of certain phases I can take.