How's this for cute?

[Irulan]

You can always just pull the cranks on a regular bike for her.

I WISH these balance bikes had been around when my kids were small. The idea is you skip the whole training wheel crutch thing, and go right to pedaling. They teach themselves to balance, and get comfortable with balance AND speed, and the pedals come naturally, later.

The homemade way to make one is to put the seat all the way down, and take off the pedals and cranks.

[Tuckervill]

I would really like for that to work, but you have to put up with the other grandma's interfering. I got my grandson a cool Specialized balance bike for his 3rd birthday--even posted pics of him riding it like the wind. For his 4th birthday, his other grandma bought him an el-cheapo bike with training wheels. Now he's confused. He really doesn't want to ride either bike much anyway. Would rather play Thomas the Tank Engine. But he'll ride some day. I really wanted to see how that balance bike thing works out.

Karen

[Irulan]

You could fix up the grandma bike to be like the other one. (pull the cranks) I wonder if the "my pediatrician said THIS was best" line would work for your bike preference. I used for everything else the comments about diaper types, what kind of shoes I wanted the kids to wear. Seriouly, the grandmas were very respectful about how we wanted to do things, I wish you that.