Baseball, Bikes and Surprises

Yesterday Nathan got a new bike and Jack requested that we take his training wheels off his bike for the first time, so today we headed to a park to try riding.

I took Jack's bike out of the trunk and handed it to him and told him to walk it over to the park and I would help him learn how to ride without training wheels in just a minute. I turned back to the van and pulled Nathan's bike out of the trunk, turned around and Jack was gone. Doing this:

OK, that was easy! He literally just got on and rode away. Jack is a funny kid. He doesn't want anyone to teach him to do things, he just does them. Same thing happened with skipping. I had no idea the kid could skip until 2 weeks ago when he took off skipping down the sidewalk. He pulled the same thing with reading recently-opened a book and read it to me. But if I ask to help-"want to read this book with me Jack?" the answer is no. He does it on his own time and his own way, but he does it.

Then it was Nathan's turn. He learned to ride training wheel-less last summer, but then his old little bike had a flat tire all winter and he hasn't ridden a bike since. I think he was a little unsure about moving up to a bigger bike AND going without training wheels but he hopped right on and did it. I knew he could. Something about that old adage...once you learn how to ride a bike I guess you just don't forget.

I love that his tongue is sticking out. This is a trait that goes back many generations.

Jack got some new baseball gear with his birthday money, so we also played ball!



And then a surprise arrived at the park:
And brought me this:

Boy does he know how to make a girl's day!