Another Miles(')tone brought to you by Panasonic

I know that title looks a little odd but it concerns our 3-and-a-half-year-old M3, Miles, who we are quickly realizing is becoming the Panasonic kid. About a week ago, Miles decided he wanted to take the training wheels off of his little bike. He's only been riding it for a couple of weeks with the training wheels because he is more interested in riding his scooter with his brothers. (I think it's because he can go so much faster on the scooter.) His balance on his scooter is great, so we decided "Why not?" and took them off.

After 3 back-breaking attempts (for dad, not for Miles- few things are more painful than running in a half crouch holding onto the back of a bike ridden by a wobbly three-year-old who is top heavy due to the ginormous bike helmet he has on...) and no success at balancing on the bike, we called it a day and he asked for his training wheels to be kept on. For some reason, he couldn't get it through his head that he needed to keep pedaling...

Today he asked for his training wheels to be taken off again. I took them off, and we had a little more success. I told him to race me and that got him motivated to pedal (even though I was running behind him hanging on to the back). On our first trip, I let go a little bit and I got the feeling this was actually going to work. Miles, on the other hand, decided he was done and asked me to put the training wheels back on.


Here's where Panasonic comes in. I knew he could do it, but I had to make it entincing for him. I told him that we would put the training wheels on, but he should try it one more time so we could film him. I got our video camera out- the Panasonic HDC-SD9- and told him that he would ride again, mommy would film it, and when he was done we could watch it on the "big TV" (which is what we still affectionately call our Panasonic TH50-PZ850). This was an incredible motivator. There are few things in the world that our boys like more than seeing themselves on the "big TV". Miles got back on the bike. We filmed it, went right upstairs, popped the SD card into the front of the TV and watched it over and over: immediate gratification.


You can see the results if you click on the video posted here. And he is now perfectly happy to leave the training wheels off.

Once again, Panasonic has inspired Miles to do more than he thought he could. When we were pulling our hair out trying to find something to motivate him to be potty trained, we found a goofy Japanese potty training video online. We used our Panasonic Toughbook Laptop (the CF-Y7) in the bathroom while he was sitting on the potty and would play the video when he did his business. We never had any worry about bringing our Toughbook into the bathroom- it can survive being dropped, bonked, and (as I found out when I accidentally spilled milk all over the keyboard while it was turned on...) wet. We do have video of this potty training process though for Miles' sake, I don't think I'll subject his future self to any undue humiliation by posting it! If it weren't for the Toughbook, I don't know how much longer it would have taken to potty train that boy!

When Panasonic gave us all of this equipment they hoped that it would inspire all of the members of our family. I know that they had expected this inspiration to come in the form of content that we would create, but they have inspired the youngest in our family to accomplish some major milestones in his life. Pretty darn impressive.

Thank you, Panasonic, for inspiring Miles to become potty trained. Thank you, Panasonic, for inspiring him to find the courage to ride his bike without training wheels. We love our equipment and will keep looking for interesting and exciting ways that it can inspire us and, hopefully, you.

Remember that you can be a Panasonic LiHD family, too. go to http://livinginhd.com/ join the community and enter to win!