dismount

the jungle gym at our playground has these great big plastic tubes in it that wile loves crawling through at break-neck speed. for a while we had a little problem with the exit, though—there's a drop of about 2 inches down to the platform from the tube, and he couldn't figure out how to conquer it. but with a little help from mama and auntie meg, he adopted the tried and true method of scooting your butt to the very edge and then dropping down. genius. of course, i'm still trying to teach him the other method of flopping over on to your belly and scooting off an edge backwards, which is helpful for descending from greater heights. it hasn't really taken, though. usually when he senses that a drop is too big for the butt scoot method, he just calls for help.

then the other day we had to take the cushions off the couch due to an unfortunate feline puking incident, and found that the drop off the cushionless couch falls into a gray area.... i would have thought that it was too high for the butt scoot method, but apparently mr. baby man disagress. observe:




the deliberation...


the approach...


and he sticks the landing!