SUCCESS!!!

Finally we have success! We have been working with Zachary on riding a bike without training wheels for a couple of years now, and he's just too anxious to try it. (This from the boy who could walk for months before he would actually walk -- unless he really wanted something -- because he fell over once early on.) Anyway, he showed a little desire again this week, so Paul went out and practiced with him.

He was VERY nervous (just look at his face in this pic!), but he kept at it, even after a couple of falls:


Tyler, who knows a key to success is to ride faster, challenged Zachary to a race. He kept telling him to go as fast (or faster) than he was and that it would help. Of course, when you're not sure of riding, faster is scary -- but I think Tyler's idea really helped:


Once Zachary had a couple of successful runs, he realized he could beat Tyler. Just look at how happy he is to realize he's ahead of Tyler (and riding w/o Paul's help!):


He didn't get starting and stopping until the next day, so even after this crash ending, he was thrilled to have done it and to beat Tyler in the process:

If you didn't notice above, you can see Tyler sprinting to the garage once Zachary had done it. He came back with this sign:

"Victorious! No training wheels." What a great brother. I LOVE that my boys are such good friends and love each other so much. In fact, after all was said and done and I went back to cleaning in the garage, I looked up to see them walk into the garage like this:

THAT is enough to melt a mother's heart. :)

Next we'll work on this one:

But with the way she's already riding this bike without a hitch, I think we'll have a bit of an easier go getting her to ride sans training wheels ... and long before she's seven ... (we can hope anyway!).