This is my son’s old bicycle.

With it’s bright red paint, black and white racing graphics, dirt bike tires and rear tire splash guard (yes, I don’t know what that piece of plastic is really called) it is a boy’s bicycle. And my son loves it.

He has adored this bicycle since the day he found it during a visit to our local bicycle shop where, after racing it full throttle around grinning sales guys and flustered parents, he refused to be removed from the bicycle, Thus, forcing us to overpay for a piece of equipment we could have easily bought at Target for a fraction of the price. I comfort myself with the rationalization that I was supporting the local economy, but it still hurts.

His adoration for this bicycle hasn’t waned in the 2 years since we purchased it, and if I didn’t know that he, like his father, was going to be falling in and out of love with bicycles for the rest of his life, I would seriously consider mounting the bicycle to his wall as a piece of artwork. (My mother-in-law says my husband purchased a Cannondale racing bicycle while in college and actually slept with it in his bed the night he brought it home. He denies it).

He loves this bicycle so much that now, when he is at least 4 inches too tall for it, we couldn’t get him to give it up. This was a problem for two reasons – first, my father-in-law had bought him a new bicycle for Christmas, which he refused to ride because it was too big (it was) and he was afraid he’d fall over (he did). Second, we wanted to give the bicycle to our 2 year old daughter (see paragraph relating to overpaying for said bicycle), but every time we put her on the bike, her big brother would fall on the floor in a fit of tears, snot and screaming until we relented.

These fits of bicycle fury from my son also didn’t help encourage my daughter’s passion for the bicycle, In fact, she would often run away from the bicycle, rather than towards it, at any mention of the word “bike.”

The answer was clear – I needed to girl-up the bike. We needed to remove, as best we could, all traces of the Jet graphics and replace them with items that would be so sparkly and so girly that our son would be forced to use his own bike. And when I say forced, I mean compelled by his father, a man who wouldn’t let his infant son suck on a pink binky for fear it made his son look like a little, bald girl.

Although the answer was clear, the solution was not. What I needed was a bicycle-sized sleeve that I could wrap around the bicycle. I needed something that was colorful, girly (as mentioned above), and able to withstand abuse inflicted by the elements and childhood. Basically, I was looking for a mailbox wrap for a bicycle…

But, since someone hasn’t come up with the wrap I was looking for, I made one myself out of spray mount and $2.49 pack of Dora the Explorer gift bags from iParty

This is my daughter’s new bicycle.

With its’ white basket, purple sparkly streamers and Dora the Explorer graphics, it is a girl’s bicycle. And my daughter loves it.

More importantly, my son does not.