Play Dates

It's been a blah kind of week, and Alice REALLY noticed, so I promised her we would do something new and different today. We invited Alice's newest friend, E, to join us at the indoor soft climbing place at the mall after preschool. Alice and E are the silliest, strangest little pair of preschool girly-girls I've ever encountered. I've been curious about their relationship for some time, wondering what it is about these girls that draws them together. This is the first of Alice's friends that I didn't hand-pick for her, after all ;) Here's a picture of them at the Preschool Christmas Program last year (matching hair bows, a gift from E):

With permission from E's mom, I picked them up from preschool and headed straight to the mall. The kids ate lunch on the way. The girls shared silly, nonsensical jokes and slapstick humor the whole way. They whispered together about a special secret surprise they had prepared at school for this very outing. They chattered about mermaid fairies. When we got to the mall, they insisted on bringing Alice's school backpack with them. Why? Because the secret surprise would have to be unveiled WHILE we were in the play place. It had all been planned just so.

"Um, okay, as long as you're the one carrying it."

We started with a carousel ride. Why not? Life is short. They picked horses side-by-side and Robert was plopped onto the cat figure next to them. He likes cats an awful lot, but he was so disoriented by the lights and music that he could barely walk straight. I buckled them in. The girls got squealy nervous as they waited for the carousel to jerk forward. Throughout the ride, Alice just kept exclaiming,"It's like Mary Poppins! It's just like Mary Poppins!" E was all smiles, but she didn't really describe the feeling until we were heading to the play place, "That was like opening presents on my birthday!"

When we got to the play place, there were quite a few kids there already. Alice and E ran off, immediately engrossed in the fantasy play they had planned on during school. Both girls followed the rules, spoke politely, took turns leading, entertained each other, and cheerfully got ready to go right when I said it was time. Creepy. Cool! The girls were such low maintenance on the whole outing that I actually had time to play with Robert. It changed the outing from 'a study of Alice's friendship structure' to a play date with my sweet little son. How on earth did that happen?! I loved it. The super-secret surprise, by the way, was a set of handcrafted paper popsicles they had prepared for everyone: Alice had a cherry butterfly, E had cinnamon, I was given orange with blueberries, and Robert had chocolate. Each paper popsicle was colored, cut out and taped to a real popsicle stick by the girls during preschool. I just crouched in the cubby hole cave, clutching my paper popsicle (as directed by the girls), and marveled at these curious little girlies and their elaborate play. I think Alice made a fine choice in friendship. Balanced, interesting, and well-matched...so far.

Anyway, we dropped off E at her house and started heading home. Alice, a bit disappointed at the end of the play date, started on her 'sour grapes' attitude. She confided in me that sometimes E doesn't let her lead as much as she would like (which is, ahem, ALL the time). I empathized and said something about friendships needing practice. We came home for quiet time and Alice slept good and hard.

Then we finished the day in another extraordinary way: the Evanses joined us for a play date and a dinner of tuna noodles, beef stroganoff, gyros, and french fries :) Certainly not the "blah" I had grown accustomed to all week.