The Big 0-5

Remember in the movie, 'Cars' when all the cars raced through the water park and 'Mater was launching water balloons with his tow-hook?

Neither do I because I'm pretty sure that never happened in any of the Cars movies. But when you're 4 and planning your 5th birthday party, reality is sort of an after thought, like napkins to wipe all the cake off your shirt.

So it went then that G, -having missed a 4th birthday party due to it being the day we moved into the Cold War Dream House and the previous and following weeks being filled with all the pomp and circumstance of remodeling and selling and buying and remodeling homes,- had a good one coming for birthday number 5.

His plan was a Lightning McQueen themed party with his blow up slide, swimming pool and Slip'n Slide. Given that our yard has multiple elevations, the layout of it all would be awesome for sure. I envisioned a wave of water from a popped inflatable swimming pool washing a fence away at least. Possibly flooding a neighbor's basement. Certainly there would be some crying kids. To make sure that last one would happen, G insisted we also have plenty of squirt guns.

Then the coup d'etat request; A Tow Mater pinata. The Lightning McQueen paper plates, napkins and Disney Cartoon shaped cake were all optional. Finish line flags, NASCAR references, Jeff Gordon look-a-likes were all unnecessary. But the 'Mater pinata was the key to the whole party. According to the 4-year old.

G's birthday represents more to The Newmaforma than just a kid turning a year older. Without getting sappy or rehashing details, his birthday is a day of celebration of family and health. A lot went down before and after G was born and we are each blessed to be here as a family. So we celebrate.

This year celebrating as a family meant making a pinata. Earlier this summer I went to a paper mache' party where I wrapped a balloon in soaked, torn up newspaper and was "allowed" to leave the party early because I sucked at making a balloon shaped paper mache' thing.

We all sat for 3 nights after dinner at the kitchen table working on Mater. I roughed up the basic frame work. A did most of the paper mache', knowing of my previous balloon aberration. G painted with mostly a brown pallet. The funnest part, the late-night Mom and Dad time building Mater's details were the time that A and I had to really enjoy.

It's amazing what skills surface when you have kid projects to do. Before G, we didn't really roll with the paper mache' crowd. Cargo-bike family fun, riding from park to park wasn't really our thing either. Nor was staying up till 2 a.m. reminiscing about how we used to  sleep for gluttonous hours at a time.Yet, it was quality time to reflect as she painstakingly made Mater's eyes and I wrote his name on the doors. We eagerly showed each other our detailed work and then basked in our completed project before reminding ourselves that some little pre-school kid was gonna destroy Mater with a wiffle ball bat.

In the end, Mater was as G had insisted all along, perhaps the best part of the whole party. Each of the dozen kids got a few swings. Mater was torn from the string hanging him by a slightly taller-than-average kid and this fool had to get his hands all into the hard end of the wiffle ball bat to keep the pummeling for candy at peak interest. G, going last, was able to purge his energy into destroying the 12 hours or so of his parents' handiwork. The kids fought en mass ripping the candy from Maters' innards and from each other before ingesting as much as possible before their own parents confiscated what was unable to be gripped in their tiny little hands.

Happy birthday G.

Hook, Line and Sinker

G thirsts  for a single activity. Granted he still practices his "moves" (read: flips, spins and flying kicks) on the couch and needs a daily dose of tire swing. He mostly just wants to ride his bike. So much so that last Sunday he asked for a long ride (20-mile loop) to the river on the tag-along for his first real ride on it, followed by a family ride, each on our own bikes to the DQ 5-miles away. Included in that ride was an hour or so at the park across the street from the DQ. Don't fret that he's becoming one of those one dimensional performer kids. I'd make a lousy Pageant Mom.

After some arm twisting during some pretty awesome recent outdoor riding weather, I conceded and took him back to the Lumberyard where he decided being the only kid on a Skuut bike was no longer cool. Much crashing, tears and firm words to his bike to cooperate, "Stop being cross with me and just obey, bike!"  Led him to managing the Green Line with the grace of any 4-year old on a 12" wheeled Monkey toy.

 

Progress of course is bitter-sweet. With the gains in confidence and the self-motivated move to his 16" wheeled bike, G is more interested in the wondrous independence that the bicycle brings. This is exciting and certainly a happy diversion from trying to teach him to wipe his own butt, yet I was a little sad when I put the Thomas up for the summer and traded it for the boat on the cargo-bike. G will be too big for Thomas come Autumn and soon, the joys of the tag-along will outweigh the rides in the boat that have been about 90% of all my riding the last 4 years. The good news is that now I can officially start dreaming of a tandem. But in all honesty, I've loved riding the Bullitt so I'm sure it will still get plenty of attention.

These days are about over!

 

 



Souplesse

Literally: suppleness, softness, flexibility, adaptability, fluidity. On the bike: smoothness, a one-ness with the machine. Think of a climber dancing away on that steep section that leaves everyone else pushing squares and threatening to rip their handlebars off...

...Souplesse connotes style, but it also hints at a deep-lying efficiency, an elimination of non-essential movement. Much has been made in recent years of incremental improvements, the sorts of time gains made in wind tunnels and in customized nutrition plans. Souplesse has that same incremental value, except that it comes from within the athlete.
-courtesy of Red Kite Prayer


But how do you teach a 4 year old a one-ness with his machine? Hell if I know. What I do know, is what I didn't do, what I did do, and like throwing mud on a wall; what stuck. And of course the positive effects of peer-pressure.  So here is a top 5 list of what it took to get G and his best pal to seek their own Souplesse.

#1 Exposure through saturation. From the first exploratory ride around the block to see if bike riding would 'take' to regular rides on the Bullitt, making adventure part of the routine has been key.

#2 Balance bikes ROCK! Having a 2 or 3 year old start out on a balance bike is like a learners' permit to the freedom of riding. My happiest memories in recent years are of riding to the park G called "Thunderdome" and of cheating winter out of the dull-drums with all day sessions at The Lumberyard.

#3 Don't forget the pedals! From his first quad wheeled Radio Flyer thing until just recently, I didn't bother G with pedals. I should have. He was fast enough on his Skuut Bike and didn't want to slow down to learn how to pedal. Finally, in desperation, and with a broken elbow (Lumberyard while G wasn't looking!) I had Grandpa bolt the training wheel arms to the rollers. Two weeks ago I swiped the Big Wheel from Grandma and Grandpa's backyard to get G's pedals turning on our own sidewalk.

 

 

 

#4 Bribery. The idea came from a friend so I can't claim it, and I felt a little dirty and low-down presenting 'The Deal' of getting Optimus Prime for learning to pedal; -no training wheels, over the course of a 3-day weekend.  It was a useful with clear rules that G fixated on as the driving force to face his biggest life challenge since learning to poop in the toilet.

#5 Peer-Pressure. Along with bribery, the planning via emails, text messages, and discussions while the boys shredded the Lumberyard had me feeling kinda' sleazy like a politician with an agenda, but this agenda is AWESOME so I only felt a little manipulative. On Memorial Day, after two-days of trying, crying and frustration, we got both the boys together and once one of them was ready to try, the other stepped right up too. No joke, 5 minutes later, we had two boys stoked for their first parking lot criterium.