So long, training wheels!

Our little girl hit a major milestone last month!  She learned to ride a bike sans training wheels.  It happened much quicker than I thought it would.  One week night (the night Eli and I went to see David Sedaris) S decided to adjust Eliza's training wheels so that they wouldn't be on the ground anymore.  He thought she might be freaked out by seeing the training wheels totally off.  It worked like a charm!  He took both kids to a parking lot nearby and said she made it a few feet by herself.  (Of course I was mortified to have missed it but he swears he never thought she'd actually be able to do it right away) The next night we all went back to the parking lot.  He pushed her and off she went.  Without an hour she was going probably 50 yards without stopping!  He detached her training wheels and let her know she'd been riding without them for 2 days.  (Ezra kept trying to reattach them with tools, ha!)  We've been 4 or 5 times now and she even went all the way around lake park the other night.  She also got a kick out of showing off for both sets of grandparents recently.  Ezra has taken over Eliza's pink scooter and is riding it very well.  Family bike rides, here we come!

Round Up and Gardening

This week Eliza was officially "rounded up" for kindergarten.  I honestly thought it was going to be a little more exciting than it was, but at least S and Eliza got to tour a kindergarten class room while I stood in line with a bunch of paperwork.  A lot of documentation is required to register and I got a little choked up while digging up her birth certificate, social security card, etc.  I came across her  newborn hearing test she had initially failed and that set me off for some reason.  I told her a kindergarten related Super Sister and Danger Ranger story the night before and tried to be casual about it so she wouldn't be nervous.  I decided that me crying at registration probably wouldn't help her make new friends.  No need for her to get a reputation as the kid with the weepy mom.  But, once we got there, I snapped out of it pretty quickly.  Something about the bureaucracy of it made it hard to be emotional.  She already knows 5 of the kids starting kinder so that helped and randomly S ran into someone who went to his high school!  What are the odds of 2 boys from small town Michigan both transferring their 5 year old daughters to the same elementary school? 

We also started a small garden this week.  (Okay, we paid someone to start a garden for us.)  But still, Ezra did his best to "help" them install it and enjoyed the mud. 

I'm excited that Elevation Burger opened their new location finally.  Hooray for grassfed organic beef at a place with a playground!  Eliza was being so sweet with Ez on the playground.  She helped him up in the swing and pushed him without even being asked!  And she stayed close by when he was near big kids to make sure they were treating him right.  May is off to a very good start!