I am up late, still in amazement of the time that Nicholas and I spent together after school. Sometimes, he has had days where I just don’t want him to go to bed – well, this is one of those days that I don’t want the day to end.

Today was a beautiful day – gorgeous fall day – it was warm enough to be outside without a jacket, the sun was bright and the sky was blue. The bus pulls up and Nicholas is giggling and laughing with another boy he’s sitting in the seat with. I never saw that before, so it automatically put a smile on my face. After letting him rest for a bit, I asked him if he wanted to go for a bike ride – and he enthusiastically said YES! So, outside we went. Usually, Nicholas will go back and forth on the sidewalk for a while and be done and want to move onto something else, but not today. Nicholas starts pedalling up the street and I’m following close behind. The sidewalk is uneven in places, so I of course help him as needed, but he quickly figured out how to do it himself so I didn’t have to help him much at that point. We went around a bend to where you could no longer see our house – and Nicholas said, “we lost our house, we have to go find it” – So I though he wanted to turn around and go back home – nope – he kept going. As he’s riding, he’s pointing out street signs, address numbers, mailboxes, flowers, cars, anything and everything. He stopped at someone’s rose bush wanting to get me a flower. “I love you mommy! You need a flower” He and I talked the whole time. He told me about the stuff he was seeing and before I could realize it, we were down the other end of our street. (Our street is pretty long and wraps around in kind of a U). We past landscapers and Nicholas wanted to stop riding so he could help them. “Mommy, I want to help” – When we got out to the main street, Nicholas wanted to walk for a little while. He held my hand for a bit (the cars fly by) and then sometimes he didn’t, he just walked with me. I had no fear of him running into traffic. He was walking with me chit-chatting the whole time. Then he wanted to get back on his bike and ride more. He’d ride until he got to a cross walk and then would move his bike between the lines and ride across and pull his bike back up on the sidewalk. I no longer had that fear I used to have while walking down that street with him – I had stopped because of it – I just didn’t want to have to drag him back home kicking and screaming from wanting to run in every direction. When we got to our street (we went in a huge circle), he knew he was close to home “my home is this way mommy” – he saw Daddy outside from a distance and started yelling, “daddy, I’m coming… here I come…. daddy, can you hear me? Here I am” When we got home, he wasn’t done riding (and we were gone a while) – so Daddy jumped on his bike and we went down another street which has a culdesac on the end. Nicholas and daddy rode around the culdesac together (like something I’d imagine NT kids doing with their dad’s) – it was so much fun to watch. Then rode up the street and back to our house – and he was so thrilled he got to go for a bike ride.
I’m still in shock by the whole thing – it was such an amazing time. Nicholas fell asleep 2 hours before his bedtime – so he must have been pooped!