No more Training Wheels

Grady's been trying for a while to lose the training wheels.  He sees a bunch of his friends riding two wheelers (and Peter) and he really wants to be able to do it too.  I've taken off the training wheels for him a couple times and he'll practice and try for a little while, but he tends to get frustrated and end up banging on the bike and crying or screaming at it.

On Friday, I went outside with Grady to pull some weeds and he took the scooter bike out to practice on.  I was telling him that he's got to go fast on it and then see how long he can keep his feet off the ground.  Because each time we take the training wheels off, he wants me to hold his bike while he tries but he doesn't get the idea of balancing and just starts leaning over.  So it hasn't worked at all in the past for me to hold on to the bike.

He was doing pretty well on the scooter bike and decided he wanted to try the regular bike with no training wheels.  We took them off and he started trying up and down the sidewalk.  He practiced balancing and trying to pedal a little bit, probably 5 times up and down the block (only the length of one lot).  He was starting to get the hang of it, but it was tough for him because he couldn't concentrate on balancing and pedaling without running into the rocks.

Eventually, again he got frustrated.  Fell once or twice on the rocks after he got upset with my attempts to grab the bike before he fell.  I told him I'd back the second car out of the garage and he could practice in there, but no more on the sidewalk right now.

He went into the garage and was riding circle around really well.  He wanted to ride more outside but we had other stuff to do.  I promised him that we'd go down to the park the next day and he could practice there, where there weren't so many rocks.

We went to the park and he spent the entire time riding his bike around the circular path.  He's really getting the hang of it.  He even rode back home on the trail with Peter and Boris.  Looks like we won't be going back to training wheels this time.

And we told Peter, once he gets a little better at stopping (don't just drag your feet!), we'll get him a new bike this summer because man does he look huge on this bike.  Then this one will be for Grady as soon as Grady builds a little more confidence on the little one.

It was also a basketball day at the park for Peter.  He made one basket.  He was very proud of it.