On Sunday at McDonalds Leo got over his fear of slides and Clara built some muscle.

We ended up at the McDo in Beloeil after visiting Grand-maman Annette Sunday afternoon. The play structure involves several platforms in succession to get to a maze of tunnels near the ceiling and ultimately a closed spiral slide back down to the bottom. Until Sunday evening Leo had refused to go down any slide without at least holding the hand of an adult or, (and this is his top preference) being safely tucked between the legs of his Mama or Papa. Something happened that night; he gained confidence from his sister's repeated assurances of "you can do it Leo." Not only did the little dude go down the slide on his ownmany many times, he also was boosted by Clara to every one of the climbing platforms. At first I didn't realise how high Clara had to lift him each time in order for him to scramble onto the platform, it was really impressive! She squatted down, grabbed Leo around the knees and power lifted him straight up! She grunted a bit but mostly she was just encouraging him the entire time. They were both running on some serious endorphins when we dragged them out of the restaurant, both of them super proud of their accomplishments.

Marc and I laughed for ages reliving Clara's exhausted, "Leo, you are doing it, that's it Leo, you're doing fine, etc" and Leo's sing-song "I did it, I can do it!"

Clara is now so sure of her strength that yesterday while watching a car without snow tires being pushed out of a snow bank she comment in a very matter-of-fact tone "I could push that car" She cracks me up :)