Picture for This Day

A rare picture of Wolverine and his mom.

Short Circuit

In the continuing saga that is Kiernan Learning to Ride A Bike, progress tends to be incremental, rather than by leaps and bounds. That's fine with us. We are in no hurry. This is obvious since it took us eight years (plus...yes, we know...plus) to get him off of training wheels. Now that he is off and riding, the little moments of progress are more pronounced, if less profound. In posts past he learned to ride on his own, and then mastered starting and stopping, and began the process of negotiating turns. This past weekend he learned to lead.

After soccer practice on Saturday we returned home and changed clothes. I decided a good father/son activity would be to go right back out and do some more bike practice, only this time I wanted to ride with him. Problem is we haven't quite figured out the logistics of bicycle transport yet. It's way too much of a production at present. Neither my car nor Wendy's has a bike rack, or bike clamp thingy attached to the back, so getting the bikes to the park takes some doing and involves multiple vehicles. Seats have to be put down or removed, and children have to be squozen in between them. It's pretty annoying. I don't see how in the future we are going to get around this. I need to figure out a solution that works for all three of us. Something Wendy can do too, when I'm not around. So hoisting bikes onto the roof of the car seems out of the question. Furthermore, mounting three bikes onto the back of the car seems unweildy. I mean, parallel parking is enough of a task without a weird extension slapped onto the back of the vehicle.

What I want is unreasonable. I want either some kind of teleportation device, or a bike shrinkage device. As neither of which seem to be in the offing, I suppose I'll have to figure something else out.

On this particular Saturday I was in luck. I figured if I could pull one of the back seats out of my car I could get both my bike and Kiernan's bike into the car and still get the two of us over to the college parking lot. The college is within fairly easy riding distance, but he's not quite ready for that kind of street riding yet, as he expressed to me when I floated this as an option. Wendy was off taking advantage of a massage Groupon that was about to expire, so I only had to consider our two bikes. As I said, luck was on my side. The seat behind my driver seat removed, both our bikes fit perfectly. Off to the college we went.

I pulled our bikes out and handed Kiernan his helmet. "I need to get one of these for myself," I said. "Why?" he asked. "You're an adult." I smiled. "Yeah, but I still need to protect my head." I don't want to wear one of those goofy helmets, but he's such a good sport about it that I want to do it out of solidarity. I can't stand it when his neighborhood friends rib him about wearing his helmet. I feel like a jerk for making him wear one. But why should I feel that way just because their parents don't care about head injuries happening to their children? [Yeah, that was a cruel thing to say, but it made me feel better.] The point is, I need to get helmets for Wendy and myself; if he has to endure the indignity brought about by safety [read: over-protectiveness , we should have to be in the same boat.

Kiernan got right on his bike and started riding, and I hopped on  mine too, following. "Don't follow too closely!" His voice conveyed way too much concern. "Why? You'll be fine," I assured him.

"What if I stop too quickly?"

"I can handle it. Believe me. I'll stop in time."

"What if you don't?"

"I will. I promise."

"I'll warn you."

We did a couple of circuits of the parking lot, me being careful not to be too close, and him being nervous I wasn't being careful about being too close. I offered to lead once, but he said he wasn't ready for that. "What if I follow too closely?"

Where all this worry about following too closely comes from is anyone's guess. I am reminded of learning to drive. My first time on the highway in Virginia, going to the mall. My dad constantly harping on the two-second rule for space between our car and the one in front of us. He was driving me nuts! Maybe that's one of those things that skips a generation, like the twins gene.

Anyway, it was a great day, and I can't wait to get back out again. Lessons to come, for those following his progress:

-Learning to start with his left foot: right now he can only get going if his right pedal is in the exact perfect position. He'll walk the bike around the block to get the pedals situated for this. I want him to start launching with his left foot, and then be able to start from the pedals at any position.

-Learning to get going with the bike facing uphill: right now he can only get started on a flat surface or facing downhill. I want him to be able to get going from a dead stop, on an incline. This is going to be a tough one, I believe. But it's a goal. And as I'm discovering daily, goals are good.

Here's a video of me following him that day at Pierce College. Yes yes, I know. Working camera while riding a bike is not exactly modeling good safety practice. What can I say? I'm a guerrilla blogging dad filmmaker. Some risks are to be expected.

Picture for This Day

A shot Wendy took a few weeks ago.

Turning the Corner

At long last we have taught Kiernan to ride a bike!

It's about time, you say. I agree, I reply. It's ridiculous that it has taken this long, but he's got it now and we're pretty excited. A few weeks ago we took him to a nearby park to get him up on his bike without training wheels for the first time in a very long time. Some time ago Gammy and Grance tried to get him to learn to do this. They removed the training wheels on the bike they'd given him and tried to help him learn, but we didn't reinforce their early efforts and Kiernan wasn't really interested in trying, so we stopped pushing the issue. Which, again, I realize was silly.

This time around he is ready. That first day he started to get the hang of it, and a few days later we moved on to another park and invited a few of his friends who can ride. On this outing he got it. One of us would get him started and run along with him holding onto the seat. In no time at all we were jogging along next to him without touching the bike for the most part. It was pretty exciting. He still could not start on his own, and stopping was a move more akin to "abandon ship!" than to stopping a bike and carefully dismounting. When he was ready to stop he'd slow down, swing his leg over and run away from the bike as it fell, reminding me of the way Bill Watterson depicts the relationship between Calvin and his bike. Calvin imagines his bike is an evil force that always out to get him.

A week or so later when Wendy was hanging out with friends I took Kiernan out to the park again to master starting and stopping, which he did fairly quickly. So he had most of the elements of bike riding and just needed more practice. As he rode in the neighborhood I realized I next needed to teach him tighter cornering. He would ride down the sidewalk with his friends. Stop his bike. Get off. Turn it around. And then ride back. That would never do, especially since we weren't allowing him to leave the sidewalk to turn around in the road as I did when I was a kid. Actually, when I was a kid we didn't even have sidewalks. Just five feet of snow. Uphill. Both ways.

So the next weekend it was off to the local college to practice his general skills and learn how to execute tighter turns. I decided a parking lot would be better than a bike path for this, both because it would afford him some space to tool around, and because it would enable him to practice without a bunch of people, including friends, around. I think part of what was holding him back and making him resistant to learning to ride the bike was that his friends were so good at it--especially the much younger brothers of his friends--and he was still learning. "Dude! Why's your dad still holding on to your bike?" That kind of thing will sour a kid on trying pretty quickly.

So we headed to Pierce College and set up a little obstacle course. He took to it right away, as you can see. Now he's making turns and starting and stopping like a pro. And, most importantly, after we finished riding on this day I asked him how he felt about it. "You know what? That was really fun!"

That's when we knew he had turned the corner for good.

Hug if by Night

When Kiernan makes a noise for the first time after he's truly fallen asleep, it's usually somewhere close to midnight, and it usually means it's time for his overnight bathroom break. We still assist him with this, though he's starting to do it on his own. There is something so wonderful about coaxing your sleeping child out of bed because you know his rhythms, shepherding him to the bathroom, and then steering him back to bed where he will dive under the covers, gather his most precious stuffed animals, and fall immediately back to sleep. I suppose we could have forced him to learn to do this on his own by now, but for a variety of reasons we have not. I could say it is because he hasn't been ready, but really it's because we haven't. This moment is too lovely, and we are both aware that it will disappear all too soon. In fact it is starting to, as he seems to rise and go on his own a little bit more frequently. Soon he won't need our help at all with this, and there will go another milestone.

Such is the plight of parents.

The other night when he stirred in the middle of the night Wendy and I were both home. We sprang into action, Wendy helping him rise out of bed and make his way to the bathroom. I stroked his hair as he walked by, saying something loving. He did his business and headed back out of the bathroom, stepping over the baby gate we have set up to keep the dog out of the cat's litter box. I stood against the wall a few feet away, facing him. As his second foot hit the carpet, his eyes still not fully open, he seemed about to stumble. I immediately leaned forward, opening my arms to catch him just in case. It turned out my help was unnecessary; he hadn't been close to stumbling. But without missing a beat he raised his arms and walked into mine, wrapping me in a sleepy hug. In the middle of the night, there in the hallway. I held him for a moment and then he released me, proceeding with sleep-heavy steps back into his room.

It's moments like that.