Tricycles in the house . . . is that such a good idea?

Flannery: Yes, yes, yessssss!!!!

Erica: No no noooo!!!!!

Flannery: Are you kidding? Why not?

Erica: Well, first off, they have been using them outside on the dirty, dog-poop coated, glass shard filled sidewalks. And how would you feel if our tenants had their kid riding tricycles in the house? It's inevitable that they will be running into the walls and splintering off door moldings. And finally, they have been doing it all evening and they are in my way!

Flannery: But, they absolutely love it (this is true) and it's kept them busy all evening (true). This is the perfect house for it: we have no furniture (somewhat true) and it's a circuit (true) without any carpet (true). And the house is already a dingy piece of crap (yes, quite true). And the landlord saw them and he thought it was cute (true). And when else in their lives will they live in a house where we will let them ride their tricycles inside (truest statement yet). It reminds me of that scene in 'Empire of the Sun' where the boy is riding his bike through the deserted house . . . (OK - you really got me with this one - we'll keep the tricycles inside for the winter).

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And in the one week since we've been back in Boston, it's been wonderful having the bikes in the house. The twins rode them a bunch this fall . . . outside, of course. We stored them in the garage. And then our landlord decided to tile his garage with marble (He gets free marble scraps from work. We think that there are more pressing places to tile - like our dingy bathroom, gross hallway, and 'once yellow now mostly brown peeling vinyl kitchen floor'. But, he wants to eventually put a pool table in his garage and now it has a floor worthy of one). Anyway, after the marbling began, we started storing the tricycles on the porch. When we left to go to Michigan for a month in Dec/Jan we brought them into the house with the thought that they would go right back on the porch the minute we came home. However, last Monday, when we stumbled into our house after our 2-day migration from Michigan, Cayla and Collin made a beeline for the tricycles. It was quite handy actually. While Flannery and I unpacked our car from a month-long holiday visit, Collin and Cayla careened around the house on their tricycles, happy as clams.

I think the above tricycle debate occurred that evening after we were all unpacked. Flannery won. The twins have their tricycles. They absolutely love them. They ride them all the time. They are amazingly adept at swinging around the corners and have only run into the walls a few times. The sidewalk filth probably was transferred to our floors in the first evening of riding. And they better enjoy it because they surely won't be allowed to do it when we move back to Ann Arbor.