Scooters And Bikes

I had a minor migraine relapse today. Minor because it was a slow build until lunch time, but then it went away by around 4. After that I tried to do some yard work outside (trimmed some bushes) while the kids played outside some. Catherine actually helped me with the weeding for a bit before she decided she wanted to ride her scooter and bike like Quinn was doing.




Now I'll be the first to admit I know almost nothing about the proper way to configure a bike, but looking at the pictures of the kids, I'm starting to think they may need their seats raised up a bit since in the pictures when they're pedaling when they're at the apex of the circle their knee is really high.


One thing that I had forgotten that today's activities reminded me of is that we need to get a new bike helmet. Catherine has completely outgrown her current helmet. I was able to get around the issue today by having Catherine wear Quinn's helmet (which if we're going to continue with her wearing that we need to adjust) and as you can see from the photos Quinn was wearing one of the baseball helmets he got for Christmas. I'm no expert, but my guess is that's probably not the safest thing, but it served it's purpose for the time being. My guess is we'll buy Quinn a new helmet and Catherine can use his current one from now on (then it's just a matter of what, if anything, we do with Catherine's old helmet).

And as we continue on with bribing Quinn to eat new stuff, we've run into a wrinkle in the plan. The plan is still working fairly well I think. Like today Quinn tried some oatmeal, and didn't hate it to the point of not tasting it again and actually took several likes and bites of it. Now he made a face each and every time he ate it, but it was the gagging that he normally did and he would come back and try it again without being forced (the deal this time was that if he licked the spoon three times and then took two bites he would be able to play the Wii some). And like it's said, it's sort of working because he gets to decide on trying new things. We present various items he can try and then what the deal for trying it is and then he picks. It's basically letting him try some new foods on his terms (at least he thinks he's on his terms since he gets some say in what he tries). And I think the fact that he's able to exercise some control over the situation helps him by having him believe he's in charge to an extent (and if it continues to get him to try new stuff, I'm more than willing to let him believe that). I mean he eats cheese now, whereas three months ago there was no way that would have happened. Anyway, the problem is Catherine. She sees what Quinn has to do to get to play, and wants to be able to play too, so she'll ask us to give her some new food to try. The problem with that is we don't have a problem with her eating new things. So there's a limited number of 'new' items we can let her try. Plus I can't just explain to her that the reason we're offering the deals to Quinn is to get him to try new things. But she really likes playing Mario Party 8 and wants to have us make some deals with her independent of the deals we're making with Quinn. I'm not sure what we're going to do once the both get bored with Mario Party 8 which right now is their big motivator to play (personally I got bored with the game a while ago, but if it continues to help Quinn try new foods, I'll suffer through it for a while longer).