Determined

I love watching my kids as they get older. I am constantly discovering more about their personalities. They are polar opposites. Bunny is calm and cautious. Lion is wild and reckless.


Bunny will study the situation. It is almost as if you can see the wheels turning inside her head. She weighs her options and decides on the best course. Lion pretty much just jumps first and asks questions later. Let's just say that it's a good thing he likes band aids.


Bunny has just blossomed in junior kindergarten. She loves school and being with her friends. We pick her up from school at 11 am and *if* it's nice out we stay and play on the playground. (I say *if* because it feels like it will never be nice again).


On the playground their are three high bars. It is the cool thing to flip yourself up on to the bar and sit on top. In order to do so, you have to reach above your head, pull your legs up and lift your body to a seated position. It's not the easiest thing to do.


Bunny's best friends could do it so she had to. I loved watching her figure out how to do it. She tried and tried. At first she could get one leg up, but not two. Then she got both up but couldn't pull herself up.



She tried for about a week to do it. And when I say tried, I mean she didn't do anything else on the playground. Her persistence paid off and she was finally able to sit atop the bar, like a queen surveying her domain. Every morning before school and after she would climb that bar and sit.


After a few weeks she grew tired of this and decided she wanted to learn the monkey bars. She couldn't quite figure out how to do it. She could hold onto the first bar and hang. She could swing her legs but she couldn't make it to the next bar.


She wanted my help but you really can't teach monkey bars (especially when your feet touch the ground). The one thing I made her do is practice dropping. I knew she needed the comfort of knowing that she could land on her feet if she fell. I would also hold her waist as she went across but she still couldn't do it on her own. But she kept practicing.


Then we took her friend M to the park with us. M is a lot like Lion, daring and fearless. The first thing M did at the park was swing across the monkey bars and back. Bunny just stared. She watched everything M did and then she tried to copy her.



Bunny let go of the bar for the first time and reached for the next one. She didn't make it but she kept doing it over and over again. I watched her from a distance as I pushed Lion on the swings. Bunny was determined. If M could do it, so could she. After all she was older than M. So again and again she tried.


And finally she did it. She made it halfway across the bars on her own. I was so happy for her. I thought I would burst into tears on the spot. My little girl had made up her mind to learn something and she did it.


I have no doubt that she can do anything she sets her determined little mind to.