Tryin' Out The Trike

Today the weather was beautiful! It was even warm enough to wear just T-shirts. Lincoln and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take the trike he got from G & G Swan for Christmas for a real test drive. He's been riding it in the living room since we got back from Christmas Break, but he gets frustrated because he can only ride it from our couch until he runs into the cabinet under the kitchen sink, and then he can't figure out how to turn it around. I thought it would be great to take it outside today and see what he could really do on it where there was a little more space. We have a church about a half block south of us across the street and I thought the parking lot would be the perfect place. So, I got Linc on his trike (I let him ride it on the sidewalk while I walked next to him, I figured it saved me from having to carry him, or the trike, or both) and away we went.

Wow. It took us FOR-E-VER to get there. I had no idea how slow a toddler on a trike could go. Especially since he doesn't quite grasp the concept of sitting on the seat yet, he just walks with the bar in between his legs. It's kind of funny actually. Anyways, it wasn't a big deal that it took so long. We really weren't in any kind of a hurry, and it was so nice out, and Lincoln was having a blast just riding straight on the sidewalk and stopping to look at the cars driving by, and the cracks in the sidewalk, and a stray pebble, and...you name it, and he stopped to look at it. But it was actually pretty nice not hurrying him along, but just letting him do his thing.

He was enjoying himself so much that he cried, and threw a little tantrum when I made him get off and hold my hand to cross the busy street. But he got over it as soon as we got to the other side, so all was well.

Like I said, I thought the church parking lot would be a good place for him to ride. This particular church parking lot, however, has entrances on three different streets, and as we were coming up on it, I noticed that the locals were using the parking lot as a short cut so as to miss the school zone and the crossing guard, that was on one of the streets. People were seriously cruising through the parking lot at 30 MPH. Which, ok, doesn't sound that fast, but they'd come whipping around the side of the church with no way of knowing if there was a little kid riding his tricycle just out of site. I decided that it wasn't going to be my little kid on his trike that they couldn't see. We kept to the sidewalks.

Lincoln had a great time anyways, and probably didn't even know that we'd changed plans. I taught him how to put his feet up on the front part of the trike so I could push him fast. He thought that was great, but we had to cut that one short, because he couldn't get the hang of steering while I was pushing him, and we went into the grass a few times. He also saw a bee, for the first time in real life (he has a book that has a picture of one, so that's how he knows what it is) and he got really excited about that. I had to try really hard to convince him that he didn't want to touch it. Everything was saw after that was a "bee!" whether is was a fly, or a pebble, or just an off-colored spot in the sidewalk.

After about an hour we headed for home. A few of the neighbors and their kids were sitting outside in the lawn enjoying the sunshine. Since I don't know anyone in our complex very well, I decided that we would sit out there too, and Lincoln could play some more and I would try and get to know people a little bit better. Lincoln opted to mostly watch the other kids play, instead of playing with them, which I thought was kind of odd, but I figure he'll grow out of that eventually. It was fun, and we had a nice time.