Display of Determination.

There's a park right by our house with a pretty decent playground and now that Tucson's bizarre cold snap has morphed into an equally bizarre heat wave, we're heading over there more often. Before it got it cold, Alex always wanted to do what the big kids did, which thankfully wasn't smoking cigarettes behind bleachers (yet), but was climbing up the slide instead of sliding down.

During the summer she was too little to do it, but this past Sunday she didn't want a little thing like a string of failures to keep her from attempting it yet again.

"There, I'm in."

"Just keep climbing, just keep climbing, climbing, climbing..."

"OH MY GOD I'M DOING IT"

"SO CLOSE!! SO CLOSE!!"

"Oh crap! Whatever, who cares, I'm gonna keep on keepin' on."

"Ooops, sliding down!!"

"Those big kids use their knees, right? And don't worry, mama, I don't need help for me, because..."

"I DID IT!"

"::SCREECHES SO LOUD THE DUCKS FLY OFF THE POND AN ACRE AWAY!!!!!!::"


And of course you know what I did. I shrieked "YOU DID IT" and broke my laid back playground mommy rule and ran right over there and screamed "YOU DID IT" about five more time while begging for high-fives before she ran away to climb the 6' ladder so that I would have a heart attack.