Fearless fun

I think it was the summer AJ was one that I started using playgrounds as a gauge of how much he'd advanced in terms of coordination and sense of daring. Slides that seemed so scary in the spring to a 15-month-old, were child's play by fall for my 19-month-old as he moved beyond them, challenging himself to even scarier feats. And by the following spring, there was just no comparison.

Last night, while visiting our favorite playground in Cloquet, I couldn't help but again measure development - this time for Sydney who, with her brothers help, came down the big slide for the first time.

For anyone not familiar with the "big slide" at Churchill Elementary School, it's really, really big - I'm guessing about 25 feet high - and you have to climb numerous steps and ladders to get to the top.

After a couple trips down, AJ moved on to other adventures, but Sydney continued to shoot down on her own. "I do 'gain!"

I was thinking to myself, two years ago when we came to this park, this child couldn't even walk, and just look at her now. That got me searching through old pictures. I couldn't find any playground shots from April of '08, but I did find the one below, taken April 17, so almost exactly two years ago.

Yeah... they've changed just a bit.