"It just takes patience."

At my Grandma W's wake in 1993, my dad got up to share a little story. (If you know my dad, you are not suprised he got up to tell a little story.) Anyway, I remember this one well. He was talking about how hard it was to teach my brother how to ride a trike when he was 2-3 years old. Andy (brother if you are wondering) would wear out the toes of his shoes because he would drag his feet.

When my parents went on vacation, Andy and I would stay with Grandma. When Mom and Dad returned this one time, Andy was pedaling his trike. He asked Grandma what she did to get him to ride it and all she said was, "Patience, Jim. It just takes patience."

I've often looked back on this story for guidance in trying to teach my kids to pedal, balance, steer, etc. Hayden is stubborn, wants to go at his own pace. Maya tries, figures it's not going to work and finds it easier to go a different route. I admit to getting frustrated while trying to get H to ride his bike without training wheels, I am in the mindset that he's 5 and should be able to. In my head I try to revert back to Grandma. Patience, Jennifer, patience.

Maya has become taken with the trike lately. She just used her feet to walk it, not pedal. I kept telling her, put your feet on the pedals and push. She'd try and realized her feet walking worked better. Patience, Jennifer, patience.

Hayden has become one with the bike. Although the training wheels are still on, they are bent so he has to lean awkwardly to use them. He is doing great balancing and riding!! He has trouble on the turns, but that will come soon enough.

Maya took off this weekend on the trike! All of a sudden she's pedaling like mad and going.

Just a little patience, some time, a little bit of frustration and a little more patience.

He's ready, I'm not

This came in the mail yesterday:

He's all registered and has seen the school, but now it seems more official. We've gotten the invite to come and look at where my baby boy will be spending half days, every day for the next year and then year after year after that.

As much as I love and enjoy this guy:

I so wanna have this guy back in my arms:

Hold on to them tight. It goes by in a flash.

Miss Maniac

A fun afternoon was not had on Tuesday. Maya, in all her adorableness, became a devil.

She looked so pretty in her Springy floral bubble dress that she has been begging to wear. She decided to color on it. With pen. Not all over, just a few choice spots on th chest.

Later on, she wanted something to drink. Particularily Grandpa's juice. This is what we call the Crystal Light concoction of lemonade and iced tea w/ lemon to create a diet Arnold Palmer, that was discovered at Grandpa B's long ago.

Before I could get to the fridge, Maya decided a drink was not good enough, better to take a shower in it.

She's a warm water kind of girl, so this wasn't the batheing experience she was hoping for. And yes I let her stand there crying while I got the camera.

Since I now had the chore of cleaing the floor and then cleaning out the refrigerator, the kids had to get outside. Just about done cleaning the fridge, on my last couple of door shelves, I hear a blood chilling scream.

WTF! It's Hayden. With H you kind of have to feel around the crying to see how serious it really is. I got him to calm down a little and notice a little scratch near his eye. I had heard Maya's name mentioned in the sobs, so came to the conclusion she scratched him. He already has scratches on the other side of his face from her last weekend. A scratch was not worth the scream I heard. THEN, after hugs and calming words, I look again at his eye. Not just a scratch, it was puffing up. I looked at Maya who is standing there holding an iron rod!!

Where she came across this is beyond me, but I finally figured out what the scream was for. She had whacked him with the rod right near his eye.

This is two days later, the lid is purple now, and the scrapes are healing. Thankfully it wasn't the actual eye and nothing was broken.

I have a rambunctious little diva on my hands.