Regine was at the playground playing when she came across this tunnel. She wanted to enter the thing but, she somehow hesitated. Being a pair of supportive parents (alright, wannabes…), we gave her a few words of encouragement for her to go through it.

“Go on, go into the tunnel. Don’t be afraid… Mommy will be on the other side, and daddy will be behind you…”

But she didn’t budge. It must be the longest tunnel she has ever seen. The previous tunnels we’ve brought her to, were all short and looked very much safer. But this was different. It was oblique, and a bit dark as well. God knows what manner of creatures could be lurking in there, she must have thought. And just when we were about to give her another push, my Regine said the darndest thing ever…

“The tunnel is so BIGGGG! Regine is so small… Cannot!”

We were both amused and surprised, because we’ve never actually heard her express herself like that before, especially when she gestured the ‘BIG’ adjective with her open arms and used her thumb/index to show how ’small’ she is compared to the tunnel, with a somewhat miserable facial expression.

After we’ve laughed our hearts out, I kind of acknowledged that maybe the tunnel was too intense for her, and I told Emily that maybe we should try it again when she’s older. But Emily was relentless, and decided to give one final push. She crawled through the monster infested hell hole herself… you know, to lead by the example to see if Regine would follow. Regine procrastinated a little while, and eventually went into the tunnel and came out from the other side.

I tell you man, I couldn’t have been prouder and any more impressed. Had my baby not contrasted to us that it was hell of a task for her to crawl through that shit, I wouldn’t have felt it that much. This, people, is called ‘lowering the expectations’ and when you score, you score it with colors - more or less the same as ‘Lesson #2′ featured in my ‘What have I learned?‘ post. Dirty trick but, works all the time.

It took her old man 20 over pathetic years to learn that, but my baby already knew how to do it intrinsically (goddamn!)

Like I said, I couldn’t have been any more impressed.