We were at the fair, the four of us.  Anna is the type of child who wants to ride every ride as quickly as possible.  The bigger, the faster, the better.  Noah, on the other hand, likes both of his feet to remain on solid ground.

Brian and I tried to encourage him to just try the rides, we explained that he may be scared and nervous about the speed and the height, but once he faces his fears and just gets on, he would have so much fun.  He just needs to get on the ride.

He wasn’t hearing it.

He did however, try the bumper cars, they both enjoyed them, although I can’t really understand it since they spent most of the time waiting for the poor employee to make their cars unstuck just so they could get stuck again.  But no matter, they enjoyed it.

We did finally coerce him to go through a fun-house-type-slide-thingy, which he did very slowly and we thought for sure he was sitting somewhere in the corner because we had lost sight of him for so long, but he made it through and was absolutely ecstatic and very pleased with himself.

We ate dinner and then decided to go on the fun-house-type-slide-thingy once more.  After that, we had two tickets left for both the kids.  We encouraged them to use their tickets wisely.  “HAVE FUN!“  we said.  Noah, not surprisingly, wanted to go on what he knew, the bumper cars or the fun-house-type-slide-thingy.  But we found the most perfect little roller coaster and Anna wanted to ride it so badly, but didn’t want to go by herself.

“Noah,” we said, “just ride it, you’ll have so much fun, WE PROMISE.“  “No, thank you,” he replied, not even considering what we said to him.

“You’ll never regret it!” we encouraged.  “That’s okay.  Anna can do it.” he responded.

I looked at Anna and said “maybe you should talk to him.“  So, my six year old daughter turned to my five year old son and said “c’mon, Noah, I’ll be with you.”

And he said “okay, I’ll try it.”

They ran towards the ride and immediately gained entry.  Noah sat, nervously.

Anna checked in on him.

Multiple times.  “Are you okay?” she would ask.   “Yes, Anna.“  (she was so proud of him.)

The ride starts.

And turns out, his sister was right.

And the faith that he had in his sister just increased, somehow, their bond became stronger, at this moment.

It was the greatest ride ever.