Veronica's Tricycle

Veronica is only 23 months old, but she's already a great runner and climber and seems to have great balance. And she wants to do what we do. A couple of weeks back I took Isaac with me on a bike ride, and as soon as we left Veronica ran to the back door wearing her bike helmet and wailing "but I'm ready!"

So clearly she wants to participate in some way, but the question is how? She'd probably love to ride in one of those Burley trailers, so we might try that, and Grace has a child seat that mounts on her bike, but her bike needs some work, so for the time being I bought her a tricycle.

She can't quite reach the pedals, so I removed the seat and covered up the seat mount with a couple of diapers tied on with a belt. I took her out in the backyard to try pedaling around the sidewalk. I was pushing her, and trying to show her how to work the pedals. She was able to push herself forward with her feet on the ground, so we let her do that for a while. Our family friend Olivia came out to watch and I was chatting with her, and then noticed out of the corner of my eye that even though I was no longer pushing, Vera was still going -- and she was pedaling herself!

She didn't go very far or very long, but she did it a couple of times. I was impressed. I'm going to try to come up with a better temporary seat until she is big enough to sit on the real one. But she was right -- she's ready!