There Has To Be A Point

This has been a very exciting spring for the wee ones. For example, Mister Man finally learned how to ride his bike after four years of trying to teach him - yay Autism. It was a huge accomplishment on Mother's Day when he finally got over his fears and issues and just ... did it. And boy did he.

Since Little Miss had her training wheels removed last fall and has been riding all over the place this spring already, the fact that he finally was riding with her meant the world was now open to us. As an incentive, I'd told the wee ones that if they got good enough, we could ride to Dunkin' Donuts to get ice cream (or in Little Miss's case, the lemon sorbet that is dairy free) - yes, this was inspired by the $0.33 scoop night back in April.

My dad had a different idea. He was most excited to go for a bike ride in the forest preserve near our house. He loves to do this, and he was absolutely thrilled that the wee ones would finally be able to join him. And so we packed up our bikes on my and my father's bike racks and headed down to the park.

We unloaded and set out, with clear rules about how you bike around other people clarified before we left. Within five minutes, Little Miss was crying. I want to go back, she wailed. I just want to go home. Since she didn't appear to be in any obvious pain, and I didn't see any major issues, I told her to continue to the next bench where we could stop to talk.

Once we got there, she explained that she didn't like it and just wanted to go home. I convinced her to continue since we'd been biking for all of maybe six minutes at that point. She got back on her bike as Mister Man and my parents caught up to us - because, she was of course flying on the path and we had way outdistanced them. Within seconds, she was sobbing again, choking out I want to go home over and over again.

*sigh*

I obviously wasn't going to get around this one. Since my parents had fortunately driven a separate car with a bike rack and car seats, I asked if they could bring Mister Man home. Little Miss and I turned back around and headed for home. Once we arrived there and I had the bikes loaded, I asked her what the problem was.

But Mommy. We just kept going and going. There wasn't any end, and we were going to keep biking for no good reason at all, she sniffled - loudly.

Because riding in circles through our neighborhood apparently was going somewhere. Go fig. I did clarify then, of course. The result is that if we had brought a picnic with us and stopped along the way and then continued, that would have been fine. Had we started at the opposite end of the park and had a playground break halfway through before continuing on, that would have been fine. Had we started at one end and biked to our cars at the other end, that would have been fine.

That's why I say that Little Miss has lots of personality.

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