Ghetto Bike

Sometimes I'm not the most warm, fuzzy mom. When Madeline's bike blew a tread this week we went to one store to find a new tire. They had the right size, wrong color. It didn't even cross my mind not to buy it. Brought it home, Joe did his thing and the bike was ready for prime time. Madeline took one look at it and balked.

Two different colored tires.

OH NO! Certainly you can't ride a bike with TWO DIFFERENT TIRES!

The hell you can't. I come by this particular personality trait honestly, though I do my best to soften it somewhat. If you know my mother you know she didn't put up with this sort of bullshit from her kids. You got what you got, said thank you and pedaled off before she found a reason for you to cry. I have friends who would NEVER have purchased the wrong color tire for their kid, and that's a good choice for them. Frankly, I don't care what their tires look like, or the labels on their clothes/shoes, or who has what hi tech gadget. My kids are 6,4, and 1. We have some time before we start making concessions on what we allow/buy for our kids, until then my husband and I steer the ship.

"Stuff" isn't even on my personal radar much of the time. Don't get me wrong, I can drop a hundy at Target with the best of them, but usually a case of diapers/wipes eats up 30% of that. I do my best with my clothes, but prefer to knick things from my sister's closet because she has amazing fashion sense. Im happy with comfy jeans, flip flops and a nice tshirt. Add a cold beer and some good food and I'm in heaven. I drive an 11 year old minivan because the price was right and it hauls our stuff. When I accidentally whack the "uh-oh" pole in our garage, I don't cringe, I grin and say "We're here!" WTF, it's just a car.

So today when my sweet girl gets off the bus, I will do my best to get her back up on her two wheeler. I have a plan to tell her the new wheel makes the bike go faster...what can I say, my mom lied to us too.