Deer in Our Back Yard & Bike Riding

We were enjoying a quiet morning a few days ago when Shawn suddenly pointed out the sliding glass door. Sure enough, there was a deer in our backyard hanging out with the neighbor cat. We probably have about 5 minutes of footage of the deer just walking around the yard and eventually finding it's way back to the front yard and across the neighbor's yard. Ever since Shawn loves saying, "Dee-er! Dee-er!"

Here is the beginning of Elise's bike ride on Monday evening, May 18th. She rode 2 miles!! Fortunately there is no video footage of me asking Elise to "slow down," "stop," "Mommy needs to rest!"

Bike Rider

A few weeks ago we took Elise's training wheels off her bike to see how she'd do. Mark took her down to the elementary school the first time and described it as, "A good first effort. It wasn't amazing." Since teaching a kid to ride a bike can be painful on a parent's back, I, being the shorter of the two of us became the helper from then on. So I took her out a week later and she did okay. I actually let go a few times. She probably went about 20 feet at the most before I had to rescue her again. The next time she did a little better . . . maybe 30 feet or so. Then she had bike day at school and I figured it wouldn't be a cool thing to send her off with just two wheels and a pat on the back for good luck. So I put the training wheels back on. She had a great time just getting to ride without crashing every 20-30 feet. Then a couple of days later we went out for a walk as a family and she rode her bike with the training wheels still on. Another great time for her to just have fun riding and not worry so much. So what's the count now? Three attempts with no training wheels then two days with them back on. This evening we took them off again and headed back down to the track. I couldn't believe the improvement. Elise was all of a sudden a bike rider!! She was just off and going. It was amazing! Next time she's out I'll have Mark videotape a bit and I'll attempt to get it on the Blog. But this kid had me sweating. There were times I wasn't even at a casual jog to keep up . . . I was out and out running and occasionally calling out, "Slow down!" And when she comes to a stop, she doesn't just slow down and stop. She pedals and pedals, then slams on the brake and skids out. She turns to look at me like, "No big deal Mom. It's all good."

What We've Been Up To Lately

Well, I haven't written anything for awhile and I don't have a fantastic story to tell so I'll just tell you all what we've been up to recently. Today Elise has her last soccer class. She's been doing a Parent-Tot soccer class for six weeks. She's begged for months and months to do soccer because she thought it looked so fun. So we finally were able to sign her up for some classes. Mark took her out and bought her own ball. I think she would tell you that the hardest part of soccer is telling her ball apart from everyone else's. :) She actually did really well I think. I got to accompany her to the final two classes and I think she was definitely above average. :)

Shawn said his first "sentence" two days ago. Here's where I need my mother or my English brainiac friend, Jen H. The "sentence" consisted of three words! A subject (?), object (?) and verb. No pronouns or anything fancy like that, but I'm still calling it a sentence. We were outside doing yard work and Shawn was happily enjoying some grapes for a snack. One got away from him and rolled down the driveway and across the street. He was very distraught. "Uh oh! Uh oh!" he kept repeating. I said to him, "It's okay Honey. A bird will come along and eat it." Then he said, "Bowd eee bape?"

"Bye Bye Wum"

Spring is a fantastic time of year. It's so much fun to watch the kids seeing new things . . . flowers blooming, peas growing, strawberry plants blooming . . . it's great. Yesterday we had beautiful weather in Salem. In the afternoon I got to hang out outside with the kids. I got some wedding done and while I was weeding the flower bed I found a worm. I called the kids over to see and Shawn, being the boy of all boys that he is, was entranced. He loved it; thought it was the greatest little thing to play with. He'd touch it without any hesitation. It would crawl back down under the barkdust and he would push the barkdust away to find it again. He probably followed that worm for 15 minutes. When it was finally time to go back inside he waved to the flowerbed and out called, "Bye bye wum! Bye bye wum!" So cute!