Simian Farmer: Endearing

The sun is so disgustingly happy to stay up late with us in these halcyon days that a late evening foray to the local playground is a completely reasonable activity. We're back home in time for Dex's bath and the sun's still shining brightly. Summer solstice, how I love thee!

What impresses me even more than the amount of sunlight is Declan's endurance. I've gotten out of the habit of taking a stroller or wagon with us on walks. The nearest school playground is about six blocks away, which is a good distance to a young boy for whom a curb is still a significant obstacle. He's quite happy to walk, run, stumble, fall and crawl all the way there himself.

Mind you, there are any number of rocks, sticks, ants, cars, trucks, trees, cats, doggies, flowers, bugs and, of course, boobies along the way to distract him; so it takes a while. But seeing the sand and playground equipment ahead of him on the latter part of the journey certainly spurs the lad up that last hill.

When he was on the swings at the playground this weekend, Declan demonstrated his growing grasp of geometry. He has squares, circles, stars, hearts, rectangles and triangles mastered. (I'm still working on hexagons.) When he was clinging to the big-boy swing with my hand supporting his back, he tentatively removed one hand from the chain and pointed off to his right. "Tangoh!"

I didn't see it. "Where's the triangle, Declan?"

He kept pointing while oscillating and said again, for my edification, "Tangoh!"

I peered long and hard in the direction of his finger until it finally dawned on me: directly to his right, the intersection of the swing-set legs with the sand made an isosceles triangle! My head nearly exploded right there with the rush of blood to the 'Holy Shit!' centre of my brain.

What impressed me nearly as much was his willingness to go home afterwards. Once ensconced at the playground, he's almost always loathe to leave. Sunday, though, he walked right up to me, cocked his head, smiled and said, "Home?"

Being brilliant, I replied, "You want to go home, Dex?"

His smile stretched into a toothy grin. "Home! Mum!"

Halfway home he was done with the walking thing and I carried him on my shoulders the rest of the way. I think he got excited when he knew we were getting close.

"Home! Mum! Bay-bee ... bud-ler ... Towse!"