April 29, 2001 - Sunday
I noticed something I haven't seen before, at least not so overtly. We were in the kitchen and I saw Harry very close to and seemingly reaching for the wood stove and shouted "Harry, no." The wood stove hasn't been lit for a few weeks now, but it's clearly an off-limits zone to Harry for obvious reasons. Harry knows he's not suppose to be near it and was probably following the cat, who had just walked through the hearth and right past the stove. At the sound of my voice, Harry noticeably jumped, turning to me with the meek expression I'd expect to see from a seven-year-old who had just been caught thinking of bad intentions. Harry's face turned and his back stiffened with one of two possible emotions in mind: either he was thinking "I was only looking at the cat, but oh yeah, I'm not suppose to be this close to the stove" or "oh no, caught." I'm not sure which it was, yet either way, Harry clearly learning boundaries of behavior.

In a related story from dinner, as often happens toward the end of dinner, Harry started playing with his food and throwing some on the floor. He gets a little leeway on playing, but we try to deter the throwing. This time, we'd warned him once about the throwing already. So, when he went right back to it, I gave him a very disappointed sounding and somewhat louder "Harry, no." He straightened up and his lower lip came out so far that his mother had to cover her mouth for fear of bursting out laughing. Harry knew we were disappointed and that made him quite sad.


Comments, opinions?