Playing with a Friend

It's amazing how quickly two little girls can move between all the phases of friendship.  I mean, when Maeve and her friend A. were first hanging out, Maeve barely responded to anything A. said, because A. is a year older than Maeve and was just moving at a faster speed.  We kept trying to get the girls to play together, and they mostly played alongside each other.

After the side-by-side play came the difficult phase.  Arguing, hurt feelings, grabbing toys from each other, and lots of declarations from A. that she wanted to 'be alone for awhile', these were all we had to look forward to on a playdate for a few months.  But A's mom and I kept at it, because our girls were working through stuff, learning to get along, and besides, we wanted to talk to each other!

Now has come a period where the girls hold hands while they rush from one activity to another.  They hurt each other, they apologize, they move on and keep playing.  They share and help each other, and devise fun things to do without any input from adults.  This, frankly, feels like a miracle.  That is not to say that they didn't step on each others' toes, literally and figuratively, when they played together yesterday, but there were apologies and changes in direction.  And A's mom and I got to have almost an entire conversation and we ate lunch together, which also seemed like a small miracle.

It's going to be rough when A. and her family move to Fort Collins at the end of the summer, but we'll still make playdates happen, because our girls have worked hard for this friendship and they deserve to be able to keep it up.

Two girls sharing a toolbench