Five-Year-Olds: The struggle is real

I took my kids on a short bike ride this morning. There's a park .06 miles from my house. Just over four blocks away. Google says it should take 12 minutes to walk there, 3 minutes to bike. I love my bike, especially now that I have that nifty child seat for my toddler who loves the wind in his curls, but is growing so fast that he's possibly already too big for his seat.

There is construction on the street we normally use to get to the park, so traffic is down to one, very narrow lane. The other road we could take is much busier, so it can be stressful to take the smaller kiddos that direction. I laid out the options and we voted. It was unanimous, we would take the less busy road, despite the construction. C even presented a compelling argument: Cub would love to see the construction vehicles. Love these kids.

I'll gloss over the process of getting everyone ready because I'm pretty sure anyone who has even been near a person trying to get multiple kids ready for anything is aware of how that goes. This was one of the easier rodeos, but not worth breaking down for you.

Lunch in backpacks, shoes on feet, diaper bag packed, flat tires pumped up (how is it that 1/6 to 1/3 of their bike tires seem to always be flat despite my persistent replacement of inner tubes?), we're ready to go.

But M got a new, bigger bike recently and she's still pretty uncomfortable. She just learned to ride a bike this summer, and then we replaced her bike because she learned on a bike that she had already out-grown. We bought that bike for her over a year ago, when she first wanted to learn.

I know that google's estimated 3 minutes is unrealistic for a group of children being lead by a mom with a toddler attached to her handlebars. I wasn't concerned about time. But it wound up taking us somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes to get to the park... longer than google says it would take us to walk. 

Thankfully, the construction workers were very patient and positive. They suggested we use the road instead of the sidewalk. Given the circumstance, that made sense to me because of the various barriers, signs, and cones that might be in the way on the sidewalk and because sharing such a small road and sidewalk space, side-by-side with vehicles would be more dangerous. They stopped the cars while we got through the two blocks of road work on our bikes.

M gave up and tossed her bike to the ground multiple times on the way to the park, refusing to try again until I talked her out of her rage. In fact, she tried to quit at the opening to the one-lane road created by the construction zone. I was incredibly embarrassed, but the men with the signs were encouraging. One told M, "don't get in a hurry. Just take your time." How sweet.

We had a nice enough time at the park. M practiced on her bike and was just fine on the paths and the tennis court. She was even excited to show me how good she's getting at turning. We had a picnic lunch and played on the equipment. Still, by the time we got home, I was really tired of M's rage quit attitude while biking. She's fine when she is totally in control and without boundaries, she's definitely capable enough to handle planned bike rides. She doesn't seem to think that.

Of course, when you're out on your bike, you can't just quit. You've got to get home somehow. So, instead of quitting once and having it over with, she quits, I talk her back onto her bike for a few minutes, and she quits again... etc.

*sigh* That's enough of that.