Socialization

Saturday was a gloriously beautiful day.  We went to a park that's tucked away in a leafy corner of the North End, because our main park has become overwhelmed with kids and dogs lately.

Because Clara's pretty young still, I have to follow her closely on the equipment.  This means I routinely wiggle through tunnels after her, climb up walls grasping onto a chain for support (while she sits on my hip), and go down all manner of slides.  It's important that there not be too many other kids around, because they get impatient with my slowness in, for example, scaling ladders to reach the tallest corkscrew slide. Also, my larger adult body tends to cause all sorts of traffic jams on the equipment or in the beauty bark under the equipment.

At the park on Saturday, we ran into a little girl in a purple dress.  She was about three.  Clara smiled at her sort of shyly and said, "Hi!"  The little girl smiled back faintly and grasped a nearby railing with an expert underhand.

"Stairs," Clara said, and started to climb stairs leading to a hanging bridge, dragging her doll, Baby, (Ugly Baby to us, her parents.  See earlier posts for an explanation) along by the neck.  The little girl in purple waited until Clara was almost to the top, then she sped up the stairs with aplomb, making sure Clara noticed.  We went for the slides and the little girl whipped past us and flew down the slide, not even holding on to the sides for extra support.  At the bottom, she turned, smiled at Clara and expertly climbed back up the slide.

Clara saw her again at the bottom of the stairs.  She hurried over with Ugly Baby, eager to show she could keep up.  But Ugly Baby's foot got caught in her legs.  Clara made an exasperated sound in the back of her throat.  Huffing with impatience at Ugly Baby, she tossed her up a couple of stairs and attempted to mount the bottom step with flair.  But the little girl in the purple dress was already on to the next thing.

Some older boys were piling beauty bark on the bottom of another slide and trying to make spinning tops go down the slide and crash through the piles.  The tops were released by some sort of launcher. Clara, eager to extend a helping hand, began to furiously pile beauty bark on their piles.  The boys paused, clearly waiting for intervention.  I could tell by their resigned patience they had younger siblings at home.

I pulled Clara away and told her we'd watch for awhile.

"You didn't make it! Watch this! Back up!" said one boy in black high-water jeans to another.  He got into a crouching action stance halfway up the slide and released his top with the same wrist technique that Spiderman uses to shoot out a strand of web.

Clara was in awe.