Sunday, April 13, 2008

I waited for this day...and it looks like I will be waiting even longer now

I have had a blog writing block all week. Every time I sit down at the computer, and start to write something, I read it, and am not happy with it. In fact, at work on Friday I printed out a half written blog just so I could have the joy of tearing it up and throwing it away. A lot of the things that I could write about, Lisa has pretty well covered on her blog, and there is no reason to rehash what she has already put down. But something happened yesterday, and since I was the one that took the brunt of the verbal abuse that my daughter Alexandra spewed out, I feel that I get to claim this Sorenson family moment.

It all started early Saturday afternoon. I had just gotten back from laying down some fertilizer on somebodies yard for them. I was about to go in the house, when I noticed that I had a sprinkler head plugged. **SIDE NOTE: I am SO stoked that my irrigation is now flowing. No more watering the front yard by hand, and the back yard can start its recovery from Labrador wrestling, chewing, and digging. I give it about a month, and I will have it in tip top condition...OK, back to the story at hand.** I went and retrieved my handy dandy sprinkler fixing tool, and got the water flowing again.
While taking care of said sprinkler head, Alexandra and Lorelai came outside to play. Lex jumped on her princess bike, and Lor got on her red tricycle. Since it was the best day of the year by far, I was more than happy to stay outside and watch them ride. Even Lisa came out with Elisabeth.
So Lex rode around for about 5 minutes, and I noticed that her training wheel was loose again. This seems to happen every couple days. Of course, if she had never left her bike behind my car last year, I would have never ran over her training wheels. Which in turn would mean that I never had to go out and buy new training wheels, just to get home and realize that I needed the special princess training wheels, which I could not get because they were only sold with the princess bike. Which forced me to try and take the new wheels and stick them on the old metal brackets that matched the bike. Which didn't work too well, since the bolts that were meant to go with the new wheels were too big for the old brackets. Which meant that I had to try and scrape at the metal to make them fit. I don't know if this paragraph makes any sense at all to you, so I will boil it down for you. I was trying to be a good dad, and in the end, I was able to accomplish that feat.

There I was in the garage, about to tighten the wheels back up when I got the great idea to ask Alexandra if she was ready to learn how to ride her bike with no training wheels. She was very excited about this, so I took the T.Wheels off, and got ready to go to work teaching her.

I had it all planned out. I was going to teach her the way I taught my two brothers to ride. I would take her to the park, and have her ride down a slight hill so she could build up speed. Then all she would have to do was to pedal. Sure, she would wreck at the bottom, but it would help show her the balance that she would need. Sounds easy enough right? It sure did to me.

So I get Alexandra all ready to go. Helmet? Check. Knee pads? Uh...that dog chewed them, but you will be OK. Elbow pads? Hmm....They might be useful, but when I was a kid, only sissies wore elbow pads. (This is the part where I forget that I have girls, not boys.) But hey, at least she has a helmet. I tell her that I am going to give her a slight push, and that all she has to do is keep her feet on the pedals. The only problem was that I don't think I got through to her the importance of the feet on pedals thing.

Just before the first run, and last words of advice



5.4.3.2.1...we have launch. I give her the slight push, and the first 5-10 feet it looks beautiful. She is holding the handle bars straight, she is keeping her feet on the pedals, she is....uh oh, the feet are no longer on the pedals, they are up in the air. (I started to have flashbacks to my one and only motorcycle riding experience. If you don't know what I am talking about, read this old post. Unless you are my wife. I won't make you hear that story again.) Next thing I know, she is laying at the bottom of the hill, crying, and cursing out her old man. Kid was not happy at all. I went down and picked her up, and told her that we would try it another day. The only problem was that she didn't want to try it another day. This was the day. This was going to mark the first time she rode a bike by herself. I think she was planning on riding that bike back home.

Now, I don't know why I let a 5 year old girl, who at the time was saying how I let her crash, was saying that she hated my guts for making her try this bike riding thing, get me to let her give it another go. She was already a little tired from the excitement of having a meeting of her book club at our house, and was not in the best of moods. But there was a part of me that wanted her to get this down, so I agreed. I brought her back up the hill, but this time chose a spot that wasn't as steep. I tried drilling into her head the extreme importance of keeping her feet on the pedals, and that if she didn't, she would get hurt. Lex, through the tears, told me that she was ready, and again she was off.

When I say she was "off" I mean that literally. I don't know if she was struck by temporary amnesia, or had decided that she was going to show Daddy that all this pedal talk was nonsense. But she lifted those size 10's up again. And this time, the pedal scraped across her leg. This was followed by screaming, kicking, and frothing at the mouth. She was not very happy with me, to say the least. But once again, my stance is that if she would have kept the feet on, everything would be fine.


After the second wreck..and before the big bad

Daddy put the bike back in the van.



The best part of all of this, is that Lisa filmed it. So I can share it with all of you. The thing I find funny about this video is that the other two girls are perfectly happy, while the oldest sister is listing all the wrongs that her Dad committed against her that afternoon. Oh and the bike? I think that it will go up in the rafters until she is...um..lets say 8 or 9. That should be enough time for the trauma to subside. I hope.



14 comments:

Lisa Christine said...

Donald this is my favorite blog ever. I think I am just glad that you wrote all down while it was still fresh in our memories. She will enjoy reading this one day....probably to her children when she is trying to convince them to keep their feet on the pedals. Love you!

Anonymous said...

oh my!!! lol... thank you for sharing such excitement with everyone. oh goodness... alexandra is obviously not happy as i can tell from that blood-curdling squeal of her's! but i did appreciate elisabeth's toesies :] and lorelai is so funny on that toy! i love you guys. dad is an awesome writer lex... don't be too mad! :]

-courtney

Jan said...

I love Alexandra's hands folded. It really says it all. Your a great father. She will remember this for life. I had to learn these things on my own. I love how your right there encouraging and snickering. Well a little. Its so cute to see kids learning.

The Jan

Kristi said...

We took the pedals off when we were teaching our daughter how to ride a bike. Once she could balance on the bike while riding, we added the pedals back on and the rest was relatively easy. We also ran along beside her to help prevent major crashes. I remember when my dad was trying to teach me to ride a bike. He ran along behind the bike while holding onto the seat. At some point, he let go, and shortly after, I felt over. I was sure I had broken my arm. I was so mad at him! I felt totally betrayed. I can really empathize with Alexandra! Good luck next time!

meohmyers said...

This was so funny to me. I love that you have it documented on video and all the pics, too.

We got our boys on 2 wheelers when they were 4. Jeff raised (bent) the training wheels way up so they had to try and learn how to ride "quiet" without the rattling training wheels touching the ground. Once they learned how to balance, we'd take the wheels of and they were cruising like nobody's business! It's a great way to teach them only because the training wheels are still there to fall over on, only while they are learning but they are several inches above the ground so they can learn to balance which is the most important part! You should try it and show Alexandra that you've put the wheels back on (bent way up) but to ride without them. Does this make sense? Good luck!

libbie said...

So funny. I think I will have Damon wait to teach Edyn after reading this! She is so dramatic, I can't even imagine the abuse he would get.

Brian and Jennifer said...

Thanks for the great laugh. We've tryed many times to teach our girls to ride without the training wheels, and have had the same tramautic experiences, except I didn't capture them on video. Too funny. Love the chubby toes of Elisabeth and Lorelai in that fun looking toy. Hope Alexandra has recovered and has forgiven her daddy!

Alicia Leppert said...

Ugh, I am dreading this! We have told Macy, who will be 7 in three days, that we're going to do this the last two summers, and we just keep putting it off. We raised her training wheels way up and she just stopped riding her bike altogether. This was so funny. You are a great dad.

Anonymous said...

Donald, I can't help but wonder if the BIG WALL OF ROCKS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE HILL,may have had something to do with freaking her out. I know Lisa will cringe but maybe you should take her over to our old neighborhood and use that hill, after all it worked for Kelly and Shawn.
Love Mom

Heather said...

Ok. Hilarious. I'm still laughing, but in a sympathetic way.

Mitchellaus Copernicus said...

HOOOLY CRAP I'm dying here Donald. Oh man my stomach hurts, make it stop, make it stop!!!

Marilyn said...

Great post. Learning to ride without training wheels is traumatic any way you cut it. Brandon always does the "run behind holding on to the bike until they finally figure out the balance" technique, but it never fails that the child comes in bawling and saying they will never try that again.

Anonymous said...

When I get home from work today, the training wheels are going back on, and if she has those bad boys on there until she is 10, well, I guess that is how it is going to go down.

Mom~Good point about the rocks. But even if there were no rocks, I think this was still going to happen this way.

Kim~I think I might try the bent training wheels trick, but like I said these are specialized princess training wheels. I don't know if they will bend. But it is worth a shot!

~The Donald

Yasmine said...

So funny. I'm sure this footage will come in handy someday, probably as blackmail. Whether she uses it on you or you use it on her....well, it's a tossup!