the best kind of problem

Chicago playgrounds rule, especially at 5 pm in February 

Best slide in Chicago

Yesterday, we were on our way to pick up Ben from his after school chess club. We took our usual route which drives by this new playground which is really the best playground in the city. We haven't gone there very often and it's been several months since the last time we were there. It's also set about three blocks from the road we were driving on, so fairly far away for the city (and with a direct view since there are many empty lots on this stretch), but from the backseat I hear Elias say softly "I want playground." I was pretty surprised since it wasn't very close and that he would even remember that we'd been there, though he did this over the weekend too, while we were driving by another playground in the morning. It was 60 degrees here in Chicago on Saturday, so really a perfect day for to play at a playground. It was 38 degrees at 4:45 pm when we were driving past this playground yesterday, I was tired, dinner wasn't made and the sun was on its descent. I told him that I didn't know if we could go to a playground tonight, that daddy would be home soon, that I had to make dinner. Still, he was insistent, saying in a soft voice several times: "I want playground."

We picked up Ben and I decided, you know what? We can go to the playground for 15 minutes. Maybe he'll figure out that it's cold outside and want to leave anyway. If the older two don't want to play they can stay in the car (this playground in particular is a wide open space and I'd be able to see the car from wherever we were). I told them the plan as we were pulling up to the playground. The kids flew out of the car and ran straight for the equipment. And you know what? We all had a blast. Ben, in a rare display of selflessness towards his sister, let Caroline have the first turn on the zip line. Elias was like a person freed from a cage; his delight and joy was evident in every movement of his body. This child loves being outside. He headed straight for the climbing structure that led to the highest peak of the playground in order to go down the slide. We ended up staying for half an hour by which time it was getting dark and Elias was licking his hands to keep them warm (counter-productive? yes.) .

So our "problem" that is not a problem these days is that Elias is talking more! We could not possibly be more thrilled about that. He's saying what he wants with increasing regularity and clarity. Remember cafwize? It was three short months ago when I was astounded that he was able to tell me what he wants without me having to say it first and him repeat it. Well, fast forward to now and these words are coming out daily and often out of nowhere. While this is fantastic, sometimes it leads to difficulties when he says "I want pizza" and we don't have any. Or when he wants to eat an entire bag of croutons. Or, like yesterday, when he wants to go to a playground when it's 38 degrees outside. We want to give him what he asks for to reinforce the concept that if you use words, you will be rewarded by getting what it is you are requesting and thus encourage him to continue using them. However, we are coming up on the time where we need to start saying "No" to some of these requests. Perhaps that time is now. It's hard to know. Sometimes the requests are impossible, like on Friday night at 7 pm when he told us he wanted to go swimming. And he's pretty good at not throwing a fit if he can't get what he wants. But we don't want him to shut down either.

It becomes particularly difficult when he wants something that one of his siblings has. We had been encouraging them to give it to him if he verbally requests it since it was so novel that he was using language. We're moving to the point where that is no longer the case. They already talk about how spoiled he is and that he gets everything he wants, though they do understand why we are doing what we do. Some of this is a function of being the youngest child but most of it is because we want to encourage his language. Thankfully, we are also at the point where he's starting to understand simple logic: do X and Y happens. This is a very very big and welcome development. I remember when Ben hit this point right around his third birthday and feeling like that was a major turning point at which parenting became exponentially easier, which is still to say the hardest thing I've ever done.

So while Elias is our easiest child, I'm hoping that the acquisition of language and logic is portending even more development and growth in the next few months, though we are light years ahead of where we were six months ago.