ASAP

Annalee saw fit to ride two of the larger slides at the playground. The first was one with a bump halfway down, which she had ridden while holding my hand a few times in the past. Today, she insisted on going it alone several times, smiling at the top with the expectation of the experience and the satisfaction of feeling courageous. The second was a tubular slide I'd considered too intimidating for the foreseeable future. Well, the foreseeable future ended at about 12:18 p.m. on this Tuesday. Annalee allowed me to position her at the top of the long, angled tube and to run to the bottom before beginning her ascent. Still visibly brimming with the victory over the first slide, she started down the -- to her -- giant tube. She appeared, sliding on her shortpants, using her feet to get her past a few slow patches, to be the happiest person on earth to be coming down the birth canal. She was radiant, triumphant, and extremely present -- and very interested in getting on the stair-ladder and onto the top of the slide again as soon as humanly possible.

First Flight, Of Sorts

Annalee and I made a trip to Zilker Park with the express intention of putting a kite in flight. The wind was not too terrific on the hillside I found, so, though I got our kite up in the air for a minute or so on my own (with Annalee rooting me on), not even my running would keep it airborne. What that meant, I'm happy to report, was that in order to make a more realistic attempt to fly our red-white-and-black vinyl kite we would need two people on the team (and not just in name). I put the green string handle in Annalee's right hand and ran to hold the kite until a gust came. She held the plastic handle firmly, and when I released the kite it soared 75 feet into the sky in about two seconds. Annalee was tugging rhythmically at the string as though she had been flying kites for years. Before very long, maybe a minute and a half, the kite tumbled again to earth. We repeated the experiment several times, and had success several times. Seeing the look on the face of a not-quite-two-year-old girl as she controls a flying apparatus high in the air above her is an experience I can wholeheartedly recommend.