pedal bike

About two years ago we bought Leona a push-bike, and with her careful nature it took er a long time to become comfortable on it. Now, though, she's been a master at it for quite a while, coasting along down long hills and running-pushing herself along. And since Eliana is big enough to ride it too, we figured Leona's ready for a pedal bike.

As it so happens, last Easter my cousin who has two boys a little older than Leona and Eliana said he had a pedal bike he could give Leona, and since then she's been waiting patiently for it, as has Eliana.

My uncle was supposed to come visit this summer and bring the bike along, but the visit got postponed and postponed and postponed, until this Friday when he called me and said he was coming for a short visit this weekend, arriving later that evening.

Leona was the most excited of all of us about his visit, saying 'maybe he will bring the bike...we don't know though...but maybe!'. Eliana had already taken over the push-bike pretty much, as I've mentioned before, so it wasn't as big a deal that he needed to come as it was for Leona ;)

The bike is pretty heavy, and actually quite small - about the same size as Leona's old bike. Should have seen the excited grin on Leona's face when she saw it leaning against the balcony door in the living room yesterday morning.

So after lunch I took the girls down to the road right below our house so Leona could try out her new wheels. The road has a very slight incline and almost no cars come or go - and if they do they don't drive fast and we can see them coming, and they can see us.

Realized the seat on the bike was a bit too low though, and we needed a tool to make it higher, which we didn't have with us. This made it really hard for Leona to get her feet on the pedals and to pedal. Despite this she was able to pedal for about 7 meters the second time she tried going doing the decline-direction!

After a couple more goes back and forth it was time for us to go to a birthday party for one of the boys in kindergarten. Leona's first official invitation to a birthday party. She was _excited_ (I told her there would probably be some candy and cake etc., and that she could eat however much she wanted of whatever was offered...).

This morning I adjusted the height of her seat, and Judge just took them down to ride again - and when I peeked down I saw her pedalling about 10 meters on the incline-direction!

She still has to sometimes use her push-bike method to get going or in between, but the balance is there already, and the pedaling is there from riding the tricycles in kindergarten, so after a few more tries and perhaps a few more fine-tunings of the seat-height I think she'll be flying.



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