June 7, 2002 - Friday
The last time Harry and I were at the town playground he spent a healthy amount of time going down and back up the 6-7 foot tall swirly slide. And, he did that again today. But today, perhaps with confidence of the swirly slide behind him, or perhaps with the visual encouragement of another two and a half year old boy, Harry completely shed whatever nervousness he's had about the bigger slides, too. Perhaps it's unrelated, but when we were at the McDonald's playland last weekend, Harry go all the way to the top of the tubes and did who knows what up there for several minutes, but never came down the big tube slide and eventually came back out the same way he went in. What's more, during the time he was up there, several kids must have passed him to go down the big slide. When I asked him about it later, he agreed that he was a little nervous , although I've learned that the power of suggestion - as in, "Harry, why didn't you come down the big swirly slide? Were you a little nervous?" - goes a long way with Harry - "I was nervous" - and its often hard to know whether those were his thoughts our mine repeated. But, it all came together at the town playground today. Harry was a master of the slides.

He was also a very receptive playmate for two different little boys, one just two weeks younger than Harry and the other three. Neither could speak at all as well as Harry (I'm really realizing that his is, indeed, an incredibly well spoken two-year old), and the other two and a half year old seemed as though he was just learning to talk. He spoke in word combination much more than phrases, akin to where Harry's speech was something like a year ago. Yet, there was one noteworthy difference: a year ago Harry speech was more about identifying the world around him and building vocabulary. At two and a half, little Nick's halting speech seemed more built on concepts, actions, and thoughts. Interesting.


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