If time flies when you are having fun then I am Funtime Franky from Chucklesville, Laughter County. Or more likely I am realising there is WAY too much to do before the wedding. Consequently posting to this blog is an activity that hasn't been getting much of a look-in, which is a shame as there's so much going on.
Skyride Manchester Yesterday we joined 15000 other cyclists at Skyride Manchester, riding a traffic-free loop linking Manchester city centre with the velodrome. For one day only the city centre's roads were cleared of all motorised traffic. We took the kids on the bike seats and all had a great time. There are photos from our day here. Oliver's highlight was meeting Spongebob Square pants (even though he never watches the TV show). Lucy just seemed to enjoy the whole day. Another highlight was riding inside the velodrome. But nothing beat seeing the kids smiling and dancing in their seats to the sound of a PA system being towed by a guy on a bike just behind us.
Starting off
Inspired perhaps by the Skyride, Oliver has tonight mastered setting off on his bike from a standing start.
And his speed is picking up a bit too.I took him for a ride in the park tonight and got a good jog out of it myself.
Wedding plans
With less than three weeks to the big day things are getting a bit hectic now.
Hayley has her ring. I should have mine about a week before the wedding.
We have drafted a table plan. Thanks to a combination of us pushing the numbers up and then having even more people want to come than we had anticipated, the seating will now be long tables rather than round, which is a shame but can't be helped. It did make the seating plan much harder! In fact it is still not set in stone. And sadly I am sure someone or other will be disappointed not to be exactly where they had hoped, but it's a very hard balancing act and I think we;ve done the best we can.
We have a band. It took a lot of searching (including some soul searching) but I think we made a good choice. Fingers crossed!
Hayley has her final dress fitting tomorrow. I remain completely in the dark. Part of me wonders if I'll recognise her, but then I'm thinking the wedding dress is going to be a bit of a giveaway.
Holiday plans
We've managed to make arrangements to get away for a few days at some point after the wedding. The kids will be with us so it will be a kind of honeymoon come family break. We are all looking forward to it. I can't say where we are going, but Lucy's passport has arrived.
I wish I had more time. Both kids deserve a post each right now as they are so full of character and such great fun. With all the time-accelerating fun I am having, I just need to find a way to add a few more hours to each day...
There are plenty of reasons why I write this blog, but most of them can be distilled down to "for my kids".
But that's a rather lazy description. I want the kids to be able to see themselves as they were, but also for them to see how Hayley and I were too. Perhaps that's a bigger part than I anticipated, because it's impossible to convey to your child just how much they mean to you. Maybe part of me hopes the blog will help convey it. I'm sure that when they do look back it will give them a few laughs, if only when they say "Crikey Dad, you used to have hair!".
Life as a parent, whether at home or at work, can often feel like a lot work and little play. But, lame as it may sound, the rewards really do make it all worthwhile in the end. And today we got a lot of rewards.
For a start, it was a beautiful warm day with sunshine and a gentle breeze. So we decided to take a trp to the park. It was such a nice day we ended up spending all afternoon there.
While there, Oliver decided to ride his new bike for much of the time. This still needs me to start him off each time he stops, but it's a tiny price to pay to be able to watch him merrily weaving his way round the playground.
I have to say I am more than a little proud of the little guy for riding his bike so young. He's the first of all his peers to be able to do it and so much younger than I was when I finally got going. Oliver doesn't seem to appreciate his achievement though. Other kids stabilizers seem to be invisible to him, so he just keeps telling me his other friends do it too, which is kind of sweet.
And I can't comment on this achievement without pointing out that it's all down to buying him his "Rothan" balance bike (from the wonderful Islabikes).
There was lots of time on the swings or playing with their friends who also joined us (Jack, William, Jessica, Dylan, Hannah, Andrew). At one point Lucy rather spookily insisted on giving the invisible child a push on the swing.
Later in the afternoon, while Lucy napped, Oliver and I wandered off to another part of the park where we played all sorts of games of his making. I was a dog that he rode. Then I was a giant. Then we climbed a tree (really). Then we roled down a hill. Then we raced... It was a good hour or more of the sort of relaxed quality time playing with him that I never get chance to have during the week. It was so nice not to be watching the clock.
Afterwards he was on his bike again and as he rode past some flowerbeds he sang a song about riding in the countryside. As a keen mountain biker, it struck me that here was my son enjoying exactly what I do: riding a bike amid beautiful scenery. It was a touching moment and served again to remind me how fast he is growing up.
Eventually the skies started to threaten a late afternoon downpour after the heat of the day, so we headed home, Hayley and Lucy choosing the car, while I walked alongside the little man who, of course, chose his bike.
This year, after the wash-out of 12 months ago, I decided to sit out the racing at Mountain Mayhem 2009 and instead to go along for the spectacle. As well as offering a little encouragement to those friends who were still riding, it gave me the chance to take Oliver camping for the first time.
We decided Lucy was a bit young, not so much for her own good as much as the for the riders who would need their sleep on Saturday night and certainly wouldn't get it should Lucy decide she wanted to stay awake.
So last Friday evening I packed the car with camping essentials and Oliver and I headed off to Eastnor Castle Deer Park in the Malverns.
We got there just before sunset and I piled our things into the tent. Oliver played happily with my friend Dave's son, Lewis, who he has met a couple of times before. With all the unpacking and reunions with people we tend only to see at this gathering, it was 11pm before the little man and I hit the sack. He wasn't keen at first, complaining that he didn't want to go to bed, but once in the tent he was fine.
It rained for several hours in the night but we woke to a day that was to be marked by spells of very warm sunshine and just a single shower.
After a breakfast of shreddies, Oliver and Lewis took up where they had left off playing the night before and it quickly became apparent that they got on very well, playing with characters, role-playing (pretending to be fireman in our cars) and generally making a bit more mess with our limited supplies of water than we'd have liked as they made swimming pools for their animal characters.
On a whim, and without much real expectation, both myself and Lewis's Dad had taken the boys' Cnoc bikes.
"Perhaps we'll have them both riding before the weekend is out" I had joked on Thursday. Well, blow me down: we did! We had a large gently sloping area of grass next to our camping pitch and I pushed Oliver gently down it, running with him before letting go.... and he carried on pedalling and steering himself! I was absolutely thrilled. I told Oliver how proud I was of him and made a big fuss of him. Of course he didn't think half of much of it as me!
Later, I managed to persuade him to let me film him short clip of him to show Hayley. He wasn't very keen by this point but at least it shows him riding unaided.
While the boys had lunch, Dave and I went to ride some demo bikes: a Whyte E-120 and a Whyte titanium hardtail that retailed at over £3100! To be fair it felt like three grands worth of bike: light as a feather and fast! We rode a test track up and down hill for 45 minutes before chatting with one of the Whyte designers.
By now the race start was approaching. I took Oliver (who had eaten very little while I was riding) for a second chance of lunch at the cafe, which we finished just before the start.
Then it was back to our campsite for an afternoon full of riding bikes - mostly his Rothan for Oliver which spared my back pushing him - playing with the other kids there, chucking frisbees, leaving me even a little time to strum my ukulele!
Oliver was also rather fascinated by the fresh scar carried by fellow camper Gary who had recently dropped a hedge trimmer on his lower shin. Oliver even took pleasure in touching the stitches (or whatever they really are nowadays - more like little fancy band-aid strips).
I made the little man some ham sandiwches for dinner and he played on until about 9pm. I have never known him have a more active day. He was running or (push-)cycling around all evening. When he finally cleaned his teeth and went to bed he was asleep in a 2 minutes flat.
I stayed up a while longer, watching the lights of the riders pass by on the nearby climb and was also rewarded with a display of lanterns being sent up from the neighbouring Eastnor castle. There must have been over fifty of them. Very atmospheric if not a little ghostly as they floated up into the darkness of the summer night.
Sunday saw us rise around 7am and do not too much. We ambled over and watched kids climbing the climbing wall brought by the army and Oliver had an ice-cream after having an early lunch. After that we headed off home to enjoy Father's Day with Hayley and Lucy.
On the way home, Oliver told me he liked camping. And he clearly had fun with Lewis. In fact when Lewis's Mum asked him what had he done that weekend that was really great, instead of saying "I rode my bike" as she had expected, he told her "me and Lewis are best friends".
I had a great weekend with the little man. It's one I know I'll always look back on fondly. Not just for him riding his bike for the first time, but for other moments like him choosing to fall asleep holding my hand as he lay beside me in the tent on Saturday night. You can't buy memories like that.
(There are some more pictures from the weekend here.)
Having just celebrated my own birthday, I am as excited about ordering this for Oliver as I would be ordering a bike for myself. Hell, who am I kidding, I am more excited!
It's another offering from Islabikes, a company specialising in bikes for kids. This one is the Cnoc 14 (pronounced as in "knock").
I have measured Oliver and he seems to be the right size for it now. He is very confident on his Rothan (see earlier posts), so I think the time has come to see if he can add pedaling and braking to his existing cycling skills.
It's due to arrive in about a week. Watch this space.
The sun shone this Easter Saturday so Oliver and I took a trip down to Bruntwood Park with his Islabike. We took advantage of some of the open spaces and grassy slopes for Oliver to practice his cycling skills.
Afterwards, we each enjoyed an ice-cream, me sitting on the grass, Oliver sitting in my lap, watching the children playing on the slides, climbing frames and (particularly catching Oliver's curiosity) an aerial runway. He then enjoyed some time playing in both of the park's play areas before we headed home.
Back at home, Oliver and Lucy played nicely together, including deciding to clean their teeth together.
Not only does my local Decathlon store provide a good supply of reasonably priced sporting goods, but in the winter months it provides a spacious place for me and the kids to go and amuse ourselves. I check out the cycling gear and sometimes buy them clothes, while they try out the various balls, flip-flops, gloves, torches...
And of course there's plenty of space for them to run around. But today we took Oliver's Islabike. Here he is practicing his balancing skills. (Out of shot, Lucy is on her push-along trike which I am trying to manoeuvre, hence the occasionally wobbly shot.)
After a long gap, Oliver has taken to riding his Islabike again, this time getting the knack of sitting down to ride it instead of instinctively standing up. After some success within the confines of our living room, we decided to take it to the park.
I was delighted to see him really start to take to it. Hs isn't yet rolling down hills with his legs in the air like some of the videos you find on You Tube, but he certainly builds up speed on the flat and it needs a brisk walk for me to keep up with him. Not bad, given he's only spent about half an hour on it in total since we got it out again.
Today I came home to find Oliver has taken to riding his Islabike around the living room, sitting down on the seat this time, unlike his earlier ventures. Hayley had been encouraging him while I was at work and the two of them kept telling me I would have a surprise when I got home, which indeed I did. I hadn't expected him to try to ride it again until the summer.
This evening we took Oliver to the park and showed him his surprise: a new bike. I unveiled it with great import and ceremony (from under our picnic blanket).
"Bike!", was his predictable reaction as he eagerly took up the reigns (well, handlebars).
He then proceeded to waddle across the grass.
He continued this way down the full length of the park, mostly walking but occasionally sitting down when encouraged to do so.
It was only when we got to the playground that we hit two problems. Firstly, he showed an alarming similarity to his Mummy when riding: he wasn't keen on hills!
And secondly by this time - almost his bedtime - he was showing signs of getting tired and became easily frustrated. This wasn't helped by the enthusiastic uptake of his new machine by two toddler friends of his who just happened to be at the same park with their parents who delighted in their offspring toddling their first few steps on two wheels as much as Oliver disapproved. (Which was quite a lot.)
But all in all it was not a bad start considering he is not yet two years old (the recommended minimum age). I reckon that he needs a few more weeks or months to get the requisite balance and strength to roll around on it while seated as confidently as he does on more stable trikes and push-alongs. Time will tell. As long as he enjoys it, we'll be happy.
As a keen cyclist I've obviously spent the occasional minute daydreaming about my son riding his first bike. OK, so in fact that such minutes would often drift into long sessions on the PC searching for a suitable purchase, long before he was up on two feet let alone two wheels. Well, my research will finally bear fruit today when this little beauty arrives!
It's a bike without pedals, which will allow him to develop balance and (the theory claims) means that he will never need stabilisers. It's made by Islabikes, a small company set up specifically to make high quality bikes for children. This bike is the Rothan.
To say I am excited is a bit of an understatement. But it's not all vicarious pleasure and transposition of my wishes onto Oliver. I know Oliver is going to be excited too because he makes a beeline for any sort of scooter, trike or bike he comes across in the park and he loves riding on my bike in his seat. So I suspect he's going to love the idea of this bike even if he finds it hard to use at first. After all he's still not quite two years old, but hey, English summers don't last long so we thought we'd make an early start rather than wait for his birthday which is still 6 weeks away.
The other excuse, erm, I mean perfectly sound and commendable reason for buying it for him now is that it coincides with the baby's arrival (hopefully!), so we are telling him it's a present from our new arrival.
I've also bought him a new helmet with a special "pinch-free" strap. I was already looking yesterday before I took him to the park on my bike and managed to pinch his chin with it. Ouch! The little man had a pinch mark and cried, which is rare for him. However he soon recovered and I gave him "choc choc" when we got home for being so brave. Guilt suitably assuaged!
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