Proving me wrong

There are few things that entertain LittleBear more than proving me wrong. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because I'm irritatingly infallible and all-knowing, so demonstrations of my failings are a rare and entertaining delight?*

There are games that LittleBear likes to play that are designed simply to demonstrate my wrongness. He will stand holding a bouncy ball and ask "which way am I going to throw it, this way or that way?" And naturally, whichever way I indicate, he throws the opposite way. Every time. And solemnly and vehemently insists that he had absolutely, definitely, completely, already decided which way to throw, and it's entirely coincidental that it's the opposite direction to that which I had chosen. This game can be adapted to many situations - which way am I going to jump? Which way am I going to throw nanoo? Which way am I going to swim? Which way am I going to run? Which dinosaur is going to attack the stegosaur? It's amazing the number of situations in which I can be hopelessly wrong.

And despite the fact that I am more or less utterly certain that LittleBear not only doesn't know that I write a blog, but he doesn't read it, he has now set about proving my most recent post utterly wrong...

Yesterday, on his last day at pre-school, I collected him and discovered that he'd eaten couscous with tuna and peppers. Now, this might not sound particularly radical to you, but he has never eaten tuna before, despite being offered it with tedious regularity. And though he loves peppers, he religiously picks cooked pepper out of anything it appears in. And the very idea of having foodstuffs mixed is anathema to him. Except yesterday. When he ate the whole lot and declared it to be "yummy".

Today, we went swimming (at LittleBear's request) at the municipal pool. Since it's still the school summer holidays here, the pool was FULL. We had to wait twenty minutes before we were issued a ticket to be allowed to even get changed to go in. And then one of the three pools was closed because there were too many people in it. Was LittleBear fazed? Did he attempt to avoid the hordes of teenagers in the pool? Did he cower at the side, not wanting to go where there were big children? He did not. He hurled himself around like a loon and wanted to go on the water-slides but was thwarted by the 8-year age limit on them. I was genuinely astounded that he wanted to go on a new and exciting activity that was also being used by bigger children. It's all context though. The swimming pool is somewhere that (now) he's amazingly confident and happy. He loves splashing and swimming and diving and jumping, and he doesn't care if there are other people there or not, as they don't really impinge on his own fun.

Now I just have to work out what went right with swimming and try and transfer that ease and confidence to a few other realms of his life. Though if it involves all the angst and tears that we had with swimming, I think I might stick with how things are now!


* You can stop laughing now.