Ava: An Important Milestone to Learn

Back in the spring, when it was still cool enough to wear a jacket but no longer bitingly cold, I took Ava to the park. There was a little boy who had a tricycle and Ava hopped onto his tricycle. After I half-heartedly tried to shoo Ava away, the little boy's mother waved me off. I watched Ava struggle to push the pedals (she was mostly successful in going backwards) and realized to my chagrin that I'd never given her an opportunity to learn and practice an important milestone. Ava will be like any other kid one day and ask for a bike. It's probably important she learns to pedal now and graduate to a bicycle with training wheels when she's four or five.

Fast forward the entire summer to Darcy's birth. Darcy gave Ava a little tricycle (wink). Darcy was a little under two weeks old when I, sick of being cooped up, decided to strap Darcy on and take all of us on a family excursion and make Ava learn to pedal her bike aaaall the way to the park.

To the park. It's tough pedaling over the pave stones so Ava is pushing off the ground with her feet.

Going along in the Ergo

Pedaling on smoother surface is much easier

Greg is teaching her all about motorcycles and this is the first step. Hope she doesn't turn into a biker chick.

Wider open spaces, no worries about learning to steer

Then we arrived at the playground where Ava unceremoniously dumped her bike and played. She inevitably drifted, as usual, to the exercise area of the playground to play on the equipment. Greg caught her in the act:

Little monkey

Meanwhile, all Darcy did was this:

Chillax'n on the park bench with a sleep smile on her face.

Ava is also learning to hop on one foot and I think she does some other antics while hopping one foot. My memory is a little fuzzy these days.

Ava surprised us a couple of months ago by drawing a picture that was actually decipherable or recognizable, instead of random scribbles. She drew 4 smiley faces, one for each of us, including Darcy who wasn't born yet. Then she repeated this on the other side of the paper. We were amazed. What are they teaching her at preschool?!

Uh, smiley faces without the smiles

And now a picture that I stole off of Greg's photography blog to send you off with....