Skateboard picture

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Skateboarding

The boys (and I) also took up skateboarding (the pedagog in me wants to support activities that support their balance). While we are not performing death defying stunts at the skate park yet, Liam and Crispin have also impressed me with their quick progress.

Another nice feature you can't see in this picture is that another boy, Ashton, who is 8 and lives down the street, is on my skateboard practicing in the driveway. It has been nice to have this boy pop up for a few minutes now and then.

Another memory comes to mind. As a youth, I never took up skate boarding with vigor, but I do remember getting together with my sister and her friends on the steep hills of Falconhurst. We would sit in groups of 4 or 6 or 7, all on our skateboards, with our hands linked. Then we would roll down the steep hill on our boards.


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Learned to Bike

While I have been busy with the start of school (the boys, too), there has been a significant change in the boys' fun lives. Although Liam experimented with bikes and balancing for years, he never really pedaled and almost never got on a bike. Crispin did really well balancing on a bike with no pedals but insisted he needed training wheels.

2 weeks ago we went to the local bike shop (owned by a parent of Liam's classmates) and got the boys sized for new bikes, then they went with me to the skate/bike park. Liam, on a sturdy bike just the right size for him, got pedaling pretty quickly. Crispin was frustrated for half an hour because the pedals kept scratching his legs; just when I was about to take him home as he requested (and get the pedals removed for a week or two), he figured it out, and there has been no going back. Like Ralph S. Mouse and his motorcycle (from the Beverly Cleary books), Crispin wants to often and always be on his bike. He tries steeper and steeper hills and turns.

I am reminded of 2 things from my youth. On Frick Road in Fox Chapel, PA, I would ride my big wheel down the steep driveway, try to land the front wheel in the hole that had been dug for a basketball pole, and then do a front flip down the hill into the pachysandras. Maybe I only did this a few times. It feels like I did it over and over. I also remember biking on a big 2 wheeler down some hill in Fox Chapel, being about Liam's age, and intentionally going off the road to land in the woods.

Liam, too, while not showing the same obsession, has become very fast and more balanced and proud of his achievements. Liam can pedal down the street very quickly (I am with them on a bike to watch for cars, though Liam is getting to the age of being more independent; we have an 8 year old in the neighborhood who bikes over by himself frequently).

In any event, my point is not to rush the boys, but is fun to see them getting such pleasure out of a common joy of childhood (and it is good for both of them to work on balance and coordination, so it is great).