Freedom for Naomi!

Naomi has been riding a glider for a long time now, and is very skilled.  She has a glider with a hand brake, and she uses the brake to great effect.  We have LOTS of hills in our area, and she likes nothing better than to fly down the hill on her glider and brake suddenly at the bottom of the hill.  She’s great at it. 

We recently got a hand-me-down bike from girl cousin who lives nearby. 

[Indulge me in a short tangent for a moment.  For some reason, bikes that fit Naomi (who is 5 and on the small side) don’t come with hand brakes usually.  You have to really search.  And here’s the thing:  I don’t really trust the back-pedal brake for the hills here, and I want a hand brake for Naomi on her bike.  So we’ll have to see about getting a brake put on this bike, because princess bikes don’t come with hand brakes.  Apparently, princesses don’t bike full speed down huge hills to screech to a halt at the bottom…]

Girl cousin’s bike came with training wheels on it.  I was pretty sure that Naomi would be just fine once she started off on a two-wheeler, so Michael took off the training wheels today and we took the bike to a park that had a couple of different good flat areas for biking (I didn’t want her on the hills to start out) and Naomi was off!  I helped her get started a couple of times, and then she didn’t need any more help. 

The sidewalk in front of our house has a slight incline as you go away, but only slight.  This afternoon we went out there, and Naomi was up and down the slight incline, getting herself started and cruising along, yelling, “I’m DOING IT!  I’m DOING IT!”  It was really cute. 

Hannah was so excited for Naomi.  At the park this morning, she came biking up as Naomi was biking for the first time, and said in an awestruck and very encouraging voice, “NAOMI!  You’re riding!” This afternoon, they were biking up and down on their pink princess bikes with sparkling streamers.