Milestone: Biking!

Milestones like sitting, crawling, walking and such are quite a while behind us for Tobias, but, being half-dutch, there was still a pretty serious milestone for him to pass.... biking. Well, he passed it yesterday. He is pretty proud of himself and, as you can imagine, I am too. On top of that he is proud of me since I am his "biking-teacher" :-).

Anyway, it took a while. I bought him a bike last year and in retrospect I bought him one size too big. Honestly, I did so against my better judgement and aided by the advice of the salesperson, and, I admit, worried that my "investement" might be too small too soon. Well, the result was that initially he could not reach the ground and when a training wheel came loose he fell and was temporarily traumatized. He did not want to go biking at all for quite a while.

Last month we visited our friends in Paris and they had a little bike and a lot of grass, so we practiced a little and it actually worked quite well. Plus, it helped me convince Tobias that he really didn't need training wheels anymore, as long as I would hold his bike by the seat while he was riding. For the past few weeks he had weekly biking lessons on the weekend with me bing his teacher (and breaking my back in the process....). As with everything he is quite a fast learner and he took to most of the instructions I gave him. Vern, the little turtle shaped horn-like thing on his bike (named after a character from the movie "Over The Hedge") "helped" him go even faster (or so he claims... :-)).

Well, yesterday was the day he realized that he could keep going without stopping at every single lamppost and he actually rode his bike for an entire block! And even better, he wanted to do it again later (which meant that I did not have to bend over and hold his bike-seat anymore, but I had to run all the much faster and further to keep up with him....). I think we can officially say that in doing so he passed this, for Dutch measures quite important, milestone!

Oh, yeah, taking a picture while running after him ready to catch him in case he (almost) falls is kind of hard to to, hence the ommission of a picture. I will try to take one during one of the next lessons in which he will learn to start and to take turns...


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