She's a Big Girl Now!

(If this post showed up in your feed reader before, it was incomplete, I somehow accidentally published it before I was done. So ignore that one, this is the completed one!)

This daughter of ours never ceases to amaze me. She is constantly doing things I didn't know she could do, or telling me things I didn't know she knew. Sometimes it's just a little scary how quickly she learns things.

Yesterday we headed out on our bikes. We have a wonderful trail to ride on - it was once the train tracks and has been converted. When we all ride together, we go 10 miles, as that is as much as I can handle for now. (When just Chip and CJ ride, they go further.) Ruthi gets a nice ride in a trailer being pulled by one of us.

Chip usually pulls her, but yesterday I pulled her the first half of the way, and I even surprised myself! Chip and CJ had gone ahead on their bikes and went a couple of miles the opposite direction so they could turn around and then catch up with us. We can't pull the trailer down the access trail that is near our house, so we have to load it and my bike up and drive around the corner to a parking lot that has an access. She and I headed out and eventually the guys caught up with us. Even they were surprised how far up we were before they caught up.

At our turn around point, there is a concession stand, bike shop and park. We stop there and let Ruthi play and usually get some sort of treat. I got a really big treat yesterday, to my surprise. Chip bought me a new bike! He had planned to do it before we got there, and had even spoken to the shop owner ahead of time, so he was expecting us. I thought I was just trying out bikes for later on, and had no idea I was getting one then! However, the bike I loved, was in a color I didn't, so he ordered it and it will be here soon!

I told Chip that since I had been riding this older bike for a while, I had no idea what a difference a nicer one would make, and that I wouldn't have been able to appreciate this nice bike had I not been riding the other one for a while. I really could not believe the difference! I even said it was like moving to a Cadillac! I mean, the difference is amazing!

Anyway, getting to the point of my title of this post. While we were there, Ruthi was saying, "I want to ride a bike!"

There was a really cute pink one, so I pulled it down just to let her sit on it and try it out. Much to our amazement, she took off on it! Sure, it has training wheels, but we just couldn't believe it! And she did NOT want to get off. Nor did she want any help! So I took her down to a flat area and let her go. She was having trouble realizing you can only pedal one direction, so she kept stopping as she would try to pedal backwards. But she was having a blast.

When we got back up to Chip, I said, "Maybe this would be a great Christmas present." And he said something about if we waited until then, it would be too cold for her to enjoy it, so why wait? And she went home with a pretty little pink bike.

CJ and I headed on back toward the car. Chip stayed behind with Ruthi to let her ride until she was tired. They didn't get too terribly far.

The funny thing was on the way back, I was pulling an empty trailer, except for Ruthi's baby doll. I know I was getting some very strange looks from people as they peeked into the trailer expecting to see a child and there was only a doll. They must have thought I was crazy!

I passed several bikers on the way back that I had passed on the way there. They had smiled at Ruthi earlier. I just imagine what they might have been thinking when they saw that she was gone! Of course, if they passed her and Chip further up, I'm sure they were able to put 2 and 2 together. The others probably just thought I was some crazy lady.

Chip and I had some fun talking about it later. We decided that it would have been really funny had I introduced the doll as my daughter and really got people thinking I had lost it. I wonder how long it would have taken for us to hear talk about that "crazy lady on the bike trail"!

Anyway, I got back to the car and loaded up the trailer and my bike. CJ just rode his bike on to the house. I headed out to pick Chip and Ruthi up. She was definitely tired, but she wasn't admitting it. She kept insisting she wanted to ride her bike home. Of course, she had no concept of how far that really was!

We got home and I took a picture of our big girl. It's a little fuzzy, because I took it with CJ's phone, since the memory in mine was full. But it's still cute, so here she is:

She's such a big girl!

(And apparently our "Lawn Boy" needs to get a hold of the yard!)