Daredevil Baby

 

Isadora and I went to the playground today. She's developed a habit of always starting on the swing, and then slowly branching out into the more adventurous features of the play area. Today, it was swinging for nearly a half an hour. Nancy and I have begun to refer to her "swing trance." She always starts off looking like she's having fun, but after a while it looks more like she's been drugged. I find this unnerving, so I try to coax her into doing something else. "Would you like to try the slide?" I say. "More swing," she says in a monotone, staring vacantly out at the world.

Today she eventually did try the slide, but even more exciting was that she tried the red tube slide (as you can see in the picture), something she has resisted for weeks. But perhaps the most amazing thing was what happened when she asked me to take her up to the top of the biggest slide of all, one of those towering swirly slides. When I was a kid, I found these things terrifying, because I always bumped my head going down them. Isadora and I have gone down this one together several times, and even now I still get a little nervous.

So we get to the top of the big swirly slide, and I put Isadora on my lap, and she says, "Izza try. Izza try!" I asked her if she meant that she wanted to go down by herself, and she indicated that yes, indeed she did. Feeling a little nervous, I positioned her, belly down, and slowly lowered her by the arms. "Are you ready?" I asked. She was. So I let go, and she swirled out of sight.

Since I couldn't slide after her, for fear of running into her, I had to high-tail it back down the stairs to see what had happened. I half-feared I would hear her crying before I saw her. But when I got to the bottom of the slide, she was just lying there, still on her stomach. She lifted her head to look at me and her face was plastered with sand pebbles.

"Was that fun or scary?" I asked as I picked her up. "Scary," she said. Then, after a moment’s pause, she added, "More!"