Success!

It's an odd and ephemeral thing, success; it's hard to calculate, sometimes hard to grasp.  Parenting can, I admit, make it seem like a pipe dream, even with such fabulous and brilliant children.  It makes me feel, sometimes, rather like Asa, when he grasps one of the enormous oak trees in the park and declares, "I'm gonna climb this tree!"  It's tough going, and those upper branches look dizzyingly far away.

Fortunately, my child is far wiser than I: he put his foot on an outcropping of root, pulled himself up those seven or so inches, and shouted out, "I did it!  I climbed the tree!"

And so he did.