I finally got Alexis to pedal her tricycle by herself if only for a few pedal strokes. 🙂 Wanna know how I did it? Well, the child has been begging to ride the silly thing in the street because she sees the other kids riding their bikes in the street fairly regularly. I’m not going to let her ride it in the street; it’s too low to the ground and drivers wouldn’t be able to see her very easily. But I told her that if she learned to pedal it by herself I would let her ride it across the street to the other sidewalk (with me by her side, of course). No sooner had I said that than she started trying to use the silly pedals. 🙂 She hasn’t quite figured out how to keep her feet straight so the metal pieces that attach the pedals to the wheel don’t hit her heels and knock her feet off, but she’ll get there. 🙂 I was just happy that she was starting to try.
Another cool toy that Alexis got for her birthday came from my grandmother (her Grandma Dolly). She got her an interactive book called “Exploring Time with Dora” starring, of course, Dora the Explorer. I’m really liking this book. It has a clock on it that allows her to move the hands, then a smaller digital clock beneath that that reports the time digitally that she’s set on the analog clock. A “Time” button reports that time aloud that has been set. The pages of the book go through different activities in Dora’s day and say what time they happen including a small picture of a clock with the appropriate time on each page. The buttons at the bottom correspond to the different pages, and you can set the big clock for the right time for a given activity, then hear if you got it right or not. Also, as with the Dora show from what I’ve been told, she sprinkles in a healthy dose of Spanish including saying each of the times in Spanish. It’s really neat and Alexis loves it. 🙂
Branwen’s waking up, so I’d better go. Time to start the whirlwind evening!