Bjarki bikes! On his Shoulda-Been-Birthday!

Today is the day Bjarki and Reynir should have been born.  They weren’t so lucky, yadda-yadda-yadda, and that was that.  If they had been born today though, they would have been four years old, and not four years and three months old.  Which won’t matter much down the line, but during this age it still makes a difference.

For example: Three months ago, it was summer.  Today it is fall.  Three months ago Bjarki could only bike with training-wheels, and today he biked without them for the first time for real!

Yes, evil old mom (that’s me) spotted Bjarki speeding down the hill to our house about a month ago and concluded he’d eventually hurt himself because, darn-it, those training-wheels are super-dangerous at high speeds!  And so the training-wheels came off and he wasn’t all too pleased.

We made a few attempts at practicing biking, and he did pretty good except that he soon began to mostly practice breaking.  Yup, I’d get him up to speed, he’d bike with my support, I’d let go and he’d immediately stop.  After a few days of this I figured he still needed to percolate a bit, so we brought out his old tricycle, and the tiny bicycle that still has training-wheels, but can’t go very fast.

Today he asked me again to try biking on the “dog-bike” (same bike as Anna learnt to bike training-wheel-free on) and much to my surprise, he just took off!!  All he needed was a little push and then he was off!!!  So in I ran to get Finnur to video the event (we may post it later), and then to fetch my camera.  Here are some photos of the little biking-shoulda-been-birthday-boy. 🙂

Finally, a small sibling-comparison:  The ‘Gold Standard’ aka Anna mastered biking without training-wheels on 23 March 2008, when she was four years and three months old (minus two days).  Bjarki is now either four years and three months old (plus 7 days) ooooor four years old even.  So I’d say he’s doing pretty well in the biking department! 🙂