Friends

ARR actually has friends. Not baby "friends", where you set them down next to each other and say "ARR, you remember Lala or whatever" and then they gum on things and stare in mutual incomprehension. Or even young toddler "friends", where they might be able to be encouraged to hand a ball back and forth, but still vastly prefer the company of grownups (who are at least somewhat predictable and comprehensible and less likely to try to bounce a block of their heads). But friends whose names he knows and who he tells stories about and who he stops when they get separated at the playground and goes actively looking for saying, "Aidan? Aidan? Where's my Aidan?" (I'm not going to try to disguise Aidan's name here. Because seriously, every fourth kid is named Aidan.)

As class parent rep, I organized a meet up of his pre-school class today. We got about half the class. It went well--the kids were actively excited to see each other, played really nicely together, and even introduced each other to their parents. It's so different from multiple child events from only six months ago. (After an hour, they all started melting down and so we all went home, but that's a pretty good day when you're dealing with the 2-3 year old set.)