jump

Dylan,

You used to love to watch the little boy next door jump. He'd come over and put on a display of his hopping ability and you'd laugh and wave your hands in the air, then he'd run back to his house or into the waiting mini-van his mom had finished loading.

Recently you've been honing your own jumping skills.

For a week or two there were a lot of efforts that gave you clear satisfaction even though only one foot actually left the ground, the other rising sometimes to the ball of your foot, other times your toes, but still clinging stubbornly to the earth.

When we walk together down the sidewalk you'll sometimes stop and try to jump over every line where the concrete has been cracked and raised by the neighborhood tree roots then ground down by The City some years ago only to have risen further.

Now you jump out of your high chair as soon as I start to lift. You jump off of your changing table the same way. You've been jumping up and kicking both feet out in front of you, in the pack-n-play and any other surface softly suited for your bottoms-down landings.

You're even jumping from heights. There's a playground nearby where all the structures are made of compressed foam. You repeatedly climbed onto a chest-high (to you) platform and leapt down into a padded corner, thrilled at the experience even as you continually left one foot behind!


Dad