"all by myself!"

it was not that hot yesterday afternoon so i took the kids down the street to the park to burn off a little energy before daddy got home for dinner. madelyn talks about riding her bike to the park but never makes it more than a few houses. i will say that it is a pretty steep hill on the way to the park and most of the kids have trouble with it when they first start biking. it doesn't help that she has outgrown her tricycle. we have been putting off buying her an appropriately sized bike because she has shown so little interest in actually biking. but now that almost all her friends in the neighborhood race around on big bikes she is starting to change her mind about learning to ride properly.

yesterday was her day. she started out okay but as we got to the hill she got frustrated and kept saying that she couldn't do it. i told her to take a break and get off the bike to calm down before we continued on to the park. to my great surprise it worked really well. she would start melting down, tell me she needed a break, and would just sit on the grass next to her bike until she calmed down.

i was so proud of her and she was very obviously proud of herself. she told all her friends, "you know what? i rode my bike all by myself!" since most, if not all, of them were graduated to big kid bikes, they were not as impressed as she had hoped. but it didn't bother her for long. she told them that she was a big girl and then went off to play with them.


mason headed straight for the park. after i brought him back twice, madelyn was willing to head down too. they were the only two at the park and had a lot of fun running around after each other and playing peek-a-boo. and then they decided to swing together. they were so funny reaching for each other and laughing while they were swinging facing opposite directions.

we didn't get home quickly enough to avoid the mosquitoes and madelyn in particular is covered with new bites. she doesn't mind though because i let her cover them with bandaids. love.