When I got home from 500 weekend a couple weeks ago, I had patience in reserve from not having seen the girls for a couple days. I needed all that patience as I worked with Katie to get her riding her bike. She hasn’t been able to pedal by herself up to this point. She will ride along if I push, but not pedal consistently. Well, it took about 6 blocks, but she started to get the hang of it. She was actually going pretty fast at one point. Until she got going, she kept stopping every 10 seconds and getting distracted by every car, neighbor, bird, gust of wind, etc.
She went to play with two neighbor girls who are 9 months and 1 year older than she was and she tried to keep up. I thought that would motivate her more, but she still did OK. The next night, the four of us decided to walk to the "Fire Engine Engine" park. It’s about 7-8 blocks from our house. Katie decided to ride her bike as Becky pushed Amelia. It took us about 20 minutes to go two blocks. Katie was still getting distracted by every little thing and she just couldn’t make it more than 3 or 4 turns before she got stuck and I had to push her. On block 4, Becky gave up and decided to go home to plant some dwarf lilacs we’d just bought. I kept plugging away trying to get to the park. Just as we finally got a half block away from the park, Amelia was so bored she actually fell asleep. When we finally got to the corner of the park (it’s on the opposite side of this block), Katie was too tired and gave up. So she walked back. It was a good try and she’s made a lot of progress. It’s just going to require more patience on our part.
Eric's space 