Poor broken Sam
pamelamyers | August 1, 2016
Ugh. Last night after dinner, Mark took Sam out for a ride on her bike. They were gone maybe an hour and I was relaxing upstairs and enjoying the quiet. I heard the door open and was just about to go downstairs when I heard Mark yell that he needed help. That is not a good sign. Well, Sam fell on her bike and got scraped up pretty badly. I went downstairs and expected the worst – screaming, crying, whining… I was pleasantly surprised! Sam was sitting at the kitchen table with her leg propped up and she was totally fine. She looked a mess though! Apparently, down the street from us, there is a house (I know the one) that has humongous bushes that extend over the sidewalk. Sam’s handlebars hit a bush, she tried to turn away but over-corrected and down she went. She fell hard on her left side and her left knee, elbow and arm were really cut up. She even had a few abrasions on her pretty little face between her nose and mouth and on her chin. We tried to clean out her cuts as best as we could but they hurt a lot, so we used lots of antibiotic cream and covered her in various band-aids (which made her day – that kid loves band-aids).
Mark and I were very proud of her. He told me she cried a little bit, she held her and then asked her if she could ride home or he needed to get the car and she got right back on her bike and rode home.
That night in bed, she was more worried about the fact that she wasn’t yet in school and so she had no friends to show off her multitude of band-aids to. Crazy me, I thought she’d be upset about getting hurt. I assured her that she could show Grandmom all her injuries in the morning. As I was reading books, she starting complaining that her elbow hurt with no band aid on it (the band-aid kept coming off). She said, “It hurts when I bend it.” so I told her “Don’t bend it”. She looked at me like I was a lunatic and said, “It’s my elbow… bending it is part of life, Mom!” She’s such a nut.
Mark has been trying all summer to get her off the training wheels but it’s not going so well. He has been working on taking the pedals off, as well as the trainers, so that she can use her bike like a balance bike. It sometimes goes well, sometimes not. I just think she’s not quite ready yet. Just like everything else in her life, she will do it when she’s ready and not before. But in the meantime, I don’t think falling with the training wheels on did much to instill any confidence in her that she will be ok with them off. So…I think the training wheels are staying on for a while. Let’s just hope she isn’t too freaked out to ride at all!