Reading: "The Even Chance," the first Hornblower story in Mr. Midshipman Hornblower. I made the mistake of asking my father how he liked the first A&E Hornblower movie, and he waxed indignant on the movie's deviations from Forester's story. I see his point--the character of Simpson in the movie was just too unbelievably dastardly--yet I don't think the story as written would have made as good a drama.

Leaf Watch: About a quarter to a third of the trees around here have their leaves. The weeping willows are especially pretty right now: the early leaves on the long, trailing branches are more gold than green. Small green leaves are appearing amid the blossoms on some of the pear trees and forsythia bushes.

Overprotective

1:15 p.m. Daniel spent last night at Stephanie's house. She'll bring him back at 4 so that we can get him ready for his first swimming lesson today. I called Daniel this morning before lunch to find out how he was. He answered in monosyllables, too absorbed in the video he was watching to converse. Sometimes Daniel behaves more like an uncommunicative teenager than a 6-year-old. He soon handed the phone to Stephanie. When I told her I was in the alley, watching the twins playing on their ride-on cars, she shifted into overprotective grandmother mode.

"Do you walk beside them?" she asked.

"Since they are usually at opposite ends of the alley, that would be impossible unless I cloned myself," I said, trying to keep from sounding too exasperated.

"Because cars drive through there really fast sometimes," she went on.

"Remember, I told you that when we play out here, I block off either end of the alley with cones?"

"Well, drivers don't always pay attention to them."

I sighed. "They'd have to pay some attention otherwise they'll damage the undercarriage of their cars. To get through the alley, a driver has to get out of the car and move the cones, and that gives me enough time to get the boys out of the alley."

She gave a skeptical sniff, and I changed the subject.

This is not the first such conversation I've had with my mother-in-law. Tab was her only child, and (as he himself will readily admit) she smothered him with her overprotection. We've learned not to invite her with us to playgrounds because she just won't sit on a bench and relax. She insists on standing beneath the jungle gyms, watching the boys unceasingly and preparing to catch a plummeting little body. She wants us to raise her grandsons the way she raised Tab, and she can't refrain from criticizing what she views as our lax approach to parenting.

Tab and I share the belief that our boys need the opportunity to run around, climb, chase each other, and just have fun moving their bodies every day. At the very least, it helps them expend some of their excess energy. Sometimes they fall down; sometimes they even hurt themselves, but in a few minutes they stop crying and are back out there running around. Fortunately, the playgrounds we visit all have soft surfaces. When I was little, the only playgrounds we had were all paved with concete. Now that hurt!

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