Walker's first four wheeler (wreck)

First, Ellie, asking for help with the bathroom scale: Do you wanna go see how high I am in your bedroom on that thing where you weigh your body on?

OK, now the four wheeler. Two Sundays ago, I told Walker I was going to give him a surprise for being brave while I plucked about 50 splinters out of his hand that he got from playing with a poking stick back by the fire pit. I was thinking I'd get him a basketball game for the computer but everyone else thought I meant the 4 wheeler. Well, I figured that would work but I had to get it running first. I didn't get a chance to work on it until the next Sunday which meant we had to put up with him asking about it over and over again for an entire week. When the time finally came to give it to him, I asked him what he thought it might be. The only clue I had given him was that it was an outside surprise. His response: "A new baseball game! No, a new hockey stick! . . . No, new balloons!!!" I'm still confused about that last one.

He was very excited when he found out what it really was. Carla put his helmet on him and I went over how to work the throttle and the brakes (though I failed to mention that you should let off the throttle when braking. We had to go over that one later after he nearly ran into me). After that, he was off to the races. He rode around the perimeter of the yard and around the house over and over again. We have a couple very small hills toward the back of the yard that he was "jumping" over. We could hear him from clear up by the swing set yelling "WOOO!" every time he hit one. He definitely got the hang of it very quick. Or so we thought.

After about a half hour of watching him ride, I got mine out and followed him around some. On our second or third lap around the house, he suddenly decided to cut through the middle of the back yard where he, of course, hit a hill, lost control, ran into some pretty big rocks, flipped over the handlebars, and the four wheeler landed on top of him. Fortunately, I was right behind him and had the bike off of him in seconds. He was a little banged up, bruised his leg, but that was about it. He didn't get burned or anything. I was afraid that he'd never want to ride again 'cause he was pretty shaken up at first. Fortunately, he was begging me the next day to get it back out. We couldn't get it out then but I got it out for him last night. He jumped on and drove right into a bush. Oh well, I'm sure he's willing to put in the "work" to enhance his navigational capabilities.