June 2, 2004 - Wednesday
Tonight at dinner Harry asked for five pieces of avocado. That sort of exactness is rather typical at dinner time, not so much because Harry is carefully planning his diet or counting caloric intack, but because dinner time is a time when the "type A" side of Harry's personality is often overt and his attempt at controlling his environment heightened, probably by the annoyance of having to sit still at the table instead of playing somewhere else. We play along with these requests when practical, but sometimes they can become rather annoying, especially when he's in something of a mood. Tonight, there weren't really enough pieces to go around, so Harry ended up with only four pieces of avocado and that started him complaining. So, in a parental moment of half levity and half "I wish this would just stop" I reached over with my fork and cut his biggest piece of avocado in half.

Now, I would have most expected at least a little toddler outrage from Harry, to which I would have been ready to respond with a happy little math lesson and, hopefully, change the subject. But, Harry was surprisingly not annoyed at all. In fact, he was outright happy about it.

"Now I have five!" he said excitedly. He got it and he apparently got what he wanted. Isn't math wonderful!


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