With one small purchase, my husband has managed to take a child who had absolutely no desire whatsoever to ride a bicycle – and turned her into a bicycle-riding maniac.

I posted last fall about how both Abby and Hannah had outgrown their bikes, so we moved on down the line and gave Abby’s pink princess bike to Hannah (at the time, Hannah wasn’t interested in Abby’s bike at all, but this year she’s done just great with it), and put Hannah’s purple princess bike aside for when Becca’s ready.

By the way, Ron and I disagree completely about that issue – he thinks she’s ready now, while I don’t think a 2-year-old is developmentally ready for a 2-wheeler, even with training wheels. Becca’s just started to learn how to pedal and still doesn’t exactly know how to steer her little tricycle very well. But that’s a whole other post…

Ok, so last year, Abby said that she did not want a new bike. We explained that we wouldn’t plan to buy her one – unless she changed her mind this year, and then we’d see. And for the past couple of months, she’s still been absolutely uninterested in bike riding, period. I bought helmets for Hannah and Becca this spring, but there really wasn’t any point in getting one for Abby – although I made sure that she knew that she could have one if she wanted.

She didn’t. At least, not then.

Last weekend, Ron took Abby along on a trip to the store, and they happened to take a walk through the sporting goods section – by the bike accessories. Ron wanted to pick up a set of training wheels for a 20” 3-speed bike that we’d gotten from our neighbors when their daughter got a new one a little while ago. We bought it, in the hope that Abby might get motivated to ride a bike if she had one, and also figuring that we’d need a bigger bike at some point anyway.

So when Ron picked out a pair of pink training wheels, Abby (who never forgets a promise made to her) reminded Ron that he’d once said he would buy her a bicycle horn.

Ron used the horn as incentive, and asked Abby if she would ride a bike if there was a horn on it. She said yes.

Well, it turns out that it is not possible to put training wheels on a 3-speed bike, because all of the gears are in the way. So, Ron put a horn on Abby’s old bike (now Hannah’s) and Abby rode that bike up and down the cul-de-sac street next to our house, wearing Hannah’s helmet.

Hannah was not thrilled with this solution.

With one bike + one helmet + two girls being a very, very bad mix, we made a trip to Target on Friday after lunchtime. We picked out a purple helmet for Abby.

And we bought her a new bike.

It’s not a purchase that we would normally make just out of the blue – but we wanted to support her since she’s finally started to enjoy bike riding, and we didn’t want her to lose the excitement that she’d started to have about it.

We brought the bike home, and Kristi brought her boys over for some bike riding as well. You can read her post about taking off Noah’s training wheels – he just took right off like he’s been bike riding for years. 

His training wheels came off – and I put Abby’s on to her new bike. Along with a horn, of course. And she’s hardly stopped riding the bike since. Up and down the street, over and over.

She rides with Hannah…

with Noah, with Becca on her little tricycle – or just by herself.

Abby still doesn’t ride terribly fast – but it’s definitely much quicker than the snail’s pace that she used to ride at. She’s nowhere near ready to ride without the training wheels, but there’s no hurry.

She’s having a blast. Literally – as the horns have been getting quite a workout as well. 

So yesterday, we did something that up until now, I doubted that we would ever be able to do. With Becca in the bike trailer, we went on our very first family bike ride.

Imagine me in the picture too – I was behind the camera. On my bike, of course.

Just the first ride of many more to come, I hope! 

Written on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 2:23 am
Filed under abby, hannah, summer.
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