June 12, 2012--Inaugural

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."

Peanut is six months and one day old today.  The days are passing so quickly!  Time really is just a long string of consecutive moments, but if you're not paying attention, those moments get lost in the blur.  I know most of my moments will pass by me unnoticed, but my goal is to hang on to as many as possible.  I've never been one for writing in journals, and let's face it, if I had one it wouldn't last long in my house anyway.  (Anything that can be held in hand can be set down, buried, and lost forever.)  So this is my feeble attempt at a system to hang on to those moments that won't get lost or destroyed.  Internet, don't fail me now!

Today's moment won't be too hard to hang on to (with or without the internet):  Nathaniel can ride a two-wheeler now!  It was a big moment for him and his daddy.  We took all three kids out on the East River Trail, Nathaniel with his bike, Sophia with hers (with training wheels), and Peanut in the Moby wrap.  I love having that trail so close to home.  It was perfect for our purpose today:  nice and smooth, wide, and relatively un-busy.  It didn't matter that we were all moving at different speeds, Nathaniel trying to race his daddy, Sophia trailing behind a ways with her bright pink princess helmet on her head, and Peanut and I strolling along slowly at the back, enjoying the birds and each other and the scene ahead of us. 

I am so proud of Nathaniel.  He passed through that major rite of childhood, learning to ride a bike.  Matt and I were talking later and I was thinking about why learning to ride a two-wheeler is such a big deal.  Of course it's a great thing to be able to ride a bike in and of itself.  But if you think about it, it's a lot to ask of a young child.  It's scary at first.  And when you're scared, your first instinct is to back off and go slowly.  But if you ride too slowly, you tip over.  You have to ride quickly if you want to stay upright.  A child either has to be able to wrap his head around that concept, or just trust that it's true when we tell him, in order to overcome that natural inclination to be too cautious.  Nathaniel, I think more than most six-year-olds, is afraid to mess up, so for him to get past that fear and just GO without overthinking the matter or getting scared is a huge accomplishment for him.  He was positively beaming tonight.

It was his moment.