Rachel update

Rachel's our four year old for those who are casual readers. ("4 and a half!" she tells me as I read this to her.) Anyway, Rachel got her first bike this weekend. It was a gift from her Grandma and Grandpa, and kindly enough Grandpa put it together for us. Putting things together is not my strong suit. The bike is pink, with a basket and streamers as Rachel requested. She loves it. In fact she gave it a hug and kiss shortly after seeing it for the first time.

Here's a picture:



She is a little scared of going too fast. She fell a couple of times and skinned her knee once. She now has knee and elbow pads at her request. She knows how to use the brake and I think that was her favorite part of riding the bike. For a while there she'd pedal twice around and then brake. Then pedal twice and brake. Over and over. It took a while to get anywhere. Of course, stopping to look at ants or stand on the manhole cover in the neighbor's yard slowed us down, too. Then we played a "Catch the Gingerbread Man" game where I was the title character and as she was chasing me she didn't think about braking. As you can see from the picture, she is using training wheels. I was against them at first and if she were a few years older, I'd probably have said no to the training wheels. My feeling is she's going to have to learn how to ride twice. However, at 4 and a half just learning to pedal and steer are enough of a challenge. We'll get to the balancing part after a while.

It was a lot of fun helping her learn to ride. She had both grandmas helping her out too. Grandpa also sent her a cowboy hat. Here's a picture of my cutie bear with the hat: