Owen Goes Two-Wheelin'

On Sunday, Owen surprised us all and hopped on a big boy two-wheel bicycle and took off (4 years and two months old)!  He's been riding a 12" bicycle with training wheels for about a year now (not in the winter of course) and became interested when I brought home a 14" bike with a kickstand and no training wheels.  I found it at a sale and thought it might be handy to keep around until the day the boys might want to start learning, assuming it would get tossed around, dropped and generally beat up in the process.  For the last few weeks it's been sitting in the garage, looking way out of their league and had me thinking we should hang it up or at least move it out of the way.  But Owen started asking questions...and we told him he should practice more on his little orange balance bike first.  Wow - did this thing do wonders!  He rode the balance bike around for a couple days, until he was cruising all the way up and down our long driveway with his feet up.  Such determination, mixed with motivation - I told him he could have a new, orange "Dusty" (from Planes) big boy bicycle if he learned how to ride a two-wheeler!  He even put a miniature Dusty in the bike pouch of the balance bike as a reminder.  Well on Sunday he decided he'd practiced balancing enough, got on the two-wheeler, and nearly effortlessly took off!  It took minimal "holding his seat" while he rode as he had already pieced it all together between the training wheel bike and the balance bike.  After once or twice up and down the driveway, we were just jogging along side our new bicyclist.  He still isn't comfortable with stopping on his own and got a couple small knee scrapes that come with the territory the first day.  But that didn't stop him and he insisted on getting back on and trying again after falling.  We've never seen such looks of awe, amazement, and envy from Oliver and Spencer once they realized what Owen was doing!  Spencer even threw a tantrum because he wanted to be able to ride that same bike right after Owen.  I have a feeling we're going to have 3 new big boy bikes by mid-summer!