Alastair's Milestone

This weekend we lost five wheels at our house.

Two came from Alastair's bike.

Alastair has been asking to get his training wheels off for awhile now but our weekends have just been so busy that it was hard to justify taking them off if we weren't going to have time to ride. Secretly, I was hoping Kim and he would just forget about it for awhile because I thought Alastair would fall off twice and decide that he wanted the training wheels back on.

I should have had more faith in my son (also the son of his irritatingly athletic father). With a little help getting started, Alastair took off across the lawn and just kept going with a big grin on his face. He is a little weeble-wobbly at the start but the saying is true: "weebles wobble but they don't fall down." I don't think I had my training wheels off until first grade, but I'm certain I didn't get a bike at 3 years old, either.

We also cleaned out the garage this weekend. I asked Alastair, since he was such a big kid that didn't even need training wheels, did he really need that old three-wheeled scooter anymore? For those of you who don't spend much time at my house, this kid has a hoard of scooters and rides them around the yard constantly. That red three wheeler has seen its best days and Emery deserves something new when her time comes. "Could we give it to Sam?" I asked him. Sam is my "everyman" invention for less fortunate boys and girls to make charity and helping others a little easier to understand for him. "Sure," he said, "Sam will like it." Five wheels down and I couldn't be prouder of my little man.

And that's totally worth a little fist pump action.