November 25, 2002 - Monday
With Grandpa visiting for a day and a half, Harry and Jeremy stayed home for the morning and we all went to the mall and local McDonalds Playland for lunch on the way to the airport. Playland's climbing tubes are not new to Harry, having played in them a handful of times by now, but he's still shy about venturing into them right away and still has yet to go down the tube slides. He says he prefers the "step slides," which really means he likes coming down the same familiar way he went up rather than the unfamiliar and, perhaps, uncontrollable and blind descent down through the tube slides. I again used the now established deceit of telling him it's almost time to go in order to get him up into the tubes to begin with. I do this sooner because he does like the tubes and loves being in them once he's started and because once he has starter it will take some time to get him to come out.

All of this caution, though, does seem to be very much Harry's style. At playgrounds, at school, or at home with new toys, Harry's always seemed to think first before exposing himself to danger or, perhaps, conscious embarrassment from failure. It's a bit of a heady notion for a near-three-year-old, but it does seem to be Harry's method. It's a trait that's made trips to the playground with Jeremy a lot easier because I rarely have to be concerned about Harry trying something that he's not really prepared to do. Indeed, there have been many times when he's gotten half way up a particularly difficult ladder, overtly declared it was enough, or too tall for him, and come back down. He'll work on it and eventually get it, but he plays it safe. Or, if he does try some tall ladder, it's because there's a good chance he really knows what he's doing. Jeremy, on the other hand, does not seem to have the same safety-first approached.


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