Excellent suggestions here, all of them. While you are learning in grassy safe places at slow speeds, try to find some little hills to go up, go down, and to ride diagonally up and down. This would be a good one to try after some figure eights.

And I agree - I sure hope you are wearing a helmet and gloves! There is a lot of mountain biking protective wear out there, too, even crash pad shorts that have padding around the hips, etc, in case of falls. It's up to you how geared up you want to get - in my early days of mountain biking I used it all and sure am glad!

I'm looking forward to more ride reports from you. Keep it up!

Hugs and butterflies,
~T~