Proud

Is it truly amazing how much your heart can swell with pride........when it has anything to do at all with your children and their early successes.

My son is now riding his bike without training wheels. He is four and wasn't showing much interest in loosing the extra set of wheels. No problem. We weren't about to push him because he just didn't seem ready. We know that he has a 'need for speed' so to speak because he can fly up and down the street on his scooter faster than anything. But no, he didn't feel like he was ready for two wheels on the bike yet.

Until now. Three days ago, some good friends of ours gave us their son's old bike. We were planning on getting our son a bigger bike for Christmas but they insisted that we take it. So my husband worked with our son over at their house and he was starting to get the hang of it. He could ride about 5 feet without any assistance and was feeling very proud of himself.

Yesterday I took the kids out to 'ride bikes'. My husband was working and I never imagined that this would be the day when it would just click. Well it was. And it near broke my husband's heart when our son called him on the phone to say that he is now a bike rider without training wheels. I started out running along side of him, holding on the back of his shirt. We went up and down the street with my daughter running along side of us. My son was all over the place. Getting distracted by the sun, airplanes, you name it. And then all of sudden, he just rode off ahead of me. And kept riding and riding and riding. I was yelling out praises with a few "be careful's" in between. And he just got it.

At this point, his confidence was just surging and he decided that he wanted to ride down our driveway. "woooa woooa woooaaa, you know that you could crash if you get going too fast right?!" "don't worry Mommy, I won't crash". And zoom, he went flying by me like he had been riding without training wheels for years. Amazing. Completely amazing. And my heart was swelling with pride. And then my heart continued to swell triple time when my daughter got on my son's old bike with training wheels, and started riding it on her own. One of those 'Mommy Moments' that will forever be engrained in my head and in my heart. Nothing teaches confidence as well as when a child realizes that they can achieve something all on their own. Stepping stones towards extremely bright futures.

So when I thought about today's blip, I knew that I wanted to capture my son riding his bike. And of course, the abstract in 'abstract eyes' kicked in and instantly I thought, "slow shutter speed, perfect!" And this is a moment that will forever be recorded in our family's history.