sunday posts for everyone - biking, growing up and independence

this weekend our daughter audrey learned to ride a two wheeler and just like her older brother samuel is now cruising around the neighborhood with the rest of us independent of training wheels or a contraption off the back of dad's bike.  her new found freedom is really fun to watch.  she's always picked things up quickly and like her older brother is becoming computer and internet savvy (and just like with biking we have rules about how she and her brother can use the internet).  in the same way we don't let her just go anywhere and speak to anyone on her bike, we do the same thing with the time she spends online.  i am using windows live family safety on both of the kids computers and the nice thing about it is it follows each of them to other computers putting the same restrictions on their computers when they are logged in as it does if they use the family desktop computer.  we've got the same kind of controls on other "connected" devices in the house (the tv, the xbox, etc.).  biking was probably the first experience i had of being "on my own" but i knew my parents weren't that far away.  as our kids grow up we look to give them that same sense of independence (when age appropriate) but still be there when they want/need us.  

this morning i watched my son samuel measuring himself to some of the older kids and adults at church - he's already taller than a couple of them.  it's going to be fun to watch sam grow up into a young adult in the next few years (we're one birthday away from the teenage years) and get additional freedom and responsibility.  eva and i couldn't have had a more enjoyable weekend - just watching the kids growing up and being with them has been really fun.