Congratulations! My baby was born 3 weeks before I turned 48 (I have a younger wife too) and it's been wonderful. In fact he just started riding a two-wheeler 3 days ago.

Congratulations! My first, and only, little girl will be 10 in August. She was born 9 days after my 49th birthday.

It's true about the father/daughter relationship, it is truly very special, and I'm having the time of my life.

Some of the big milestones were, sleeping through the night (I was the 2 a night feeder for 8 months), pooping NOT in her pants, wiping her own azz, and finally doing her own ponytail, just this year.

I like to remind her that SHE will be changing MY diapers one of these days! :lol:

Have a ball.

Coyote

First---congratualtions !!!

But since you asked....my first piece of advice, really....if she is in her 30's and you are about to turn 50.... you should look very seriously at a substantial life policy of either whole life or 30 year term. This is for her and your child (or children, if you have more). Odds are she will outlive you by nearly 20 years.

Other than that, I'm just reading the responses to see about trailers as we want to get one for the granddaughter to pull behind the tandem.

My wife is diabetic, diabetes has pretty much wiped out her mothers family, so she may not outlive me by 20 years, her mother died in her sixties, her father reached 70, my father died in his sixties, and mom is now 88.

First of all, congradulations! I became a father at 51, so this is all recent experience.

First of all, our pediatrician recommended that we not transport our daughter by bicycle until she was a year old. The argument centered on skull and neck development. (One wonders what advice they give in, say Amsterdam, where most transportation is by bike.) Anyhow, it means you have over a year to figure it out. This is good, because transporting children is a major challenge.

One example. We vacation on an island where there are no rental cars. Strollers don't work well in sand. The best option turned out to be carrying our baby in a backpack child carrier for the first summer. Getting back strollers, your minimum requirements will likely be one folding "umbrella" stroller that goes in the car and one normal stroller. I'd recommend a backpack as well, as there are a lot of trips that are hard to navigate with a stroller.

After the first year, I'd recommend a bike trailer. You can get them for almost nothing, because kids outgrow them. You will soon find out that even a short outing with your child requires a large bag with diapers, wipes, toys, picture books, a blanket, bottles, and numerous other things. It's very difficult to carry all this without a trailer.

Bicycle child seats just suck. The dynamic stability of the bike gets truly lousy, and that's assuming the kid just sleeps. Add ten points to the degree of difficulty if she is awake and wiggling. Plus, there is no place to put the huge bag of stuff. In summary, bike seats are OK if there is no alternative and it's too far or too hilly to push a trailer. There's no way I'd consider the experience enjoyable, and plenty of situations where I'd consider it unsafe.

In contrast, trailers are a breeze. Bike stability is unaffected and there is room for everything. People love bike trailers. They wave to you in traffic and they walk up to you when you are stopped and ask where you got it and what it cost. For trips up to a few miles, we found the trailer much more convenient than driving.

At one point we had and used three child seats (one for each car and one for the airplane), one bicycle trailer, one backpack, and two strollers. Oops -- I forgot the "all terrain" stroller, so three.

Paul