Look who is riding a bike!

After having trouble teaching Alex how to ride a bike (and relying on grandpa to teach Caroline and Carter), we decided to sign him up for a bike riding class at REI.  Alex did so great and came home riding his bike--still in need of practice, but definitely riding!

Motivated by the success Alex had we decided to get the bike riding lessons over with and signed Aaron up for the same class.   That did not go as well.  It went more like Aaron yelling at the instructor and refusing to talk to him, yelling at me but me making him try through the screaming....by the end of the class he was gliding on his bike (the class has you take the pedals off and learn to balance while gliding before working on pedaling) but that is about it--and not gliding very far.  The instructor offered to give me my money back because it went so badly!  I refused and decided I would just work with him more at home.

We have gone out a couple of times this week and worked on gliding in our driveway and he did great.  Today I took him to a park and thought we could put the pedals on and see if we could get him going.  It wasn't looking good and he didn't like the pedals.  I was about to give up when I decided to go to the traditional method of having him put his feet on the pedals and I would hold him for a second then let go.  The first time I was holding his bike and he told me to let go.  I did and he started riding!  We did it a bunch more times and he is officially riding his bike!  Definitely in need of more practice, but he is doing it!  I think getting the balance down first was key, but I also think he didn't really understand how the pedals were going to work--so having him do that while I was helping let him figure it out.

Here is the video Caroline took of his last ride at the park...