Fun with Friends

Today our friends Jake, Clavin, and Grace came over to play for a few hours.  Grace is six, Jake is nearly five, and Calvin is three and a half.

Grace has a sprinkle of freckles across her nose, is good at drawing and making new friends, and lost a few teeth recently.

Jake has bright orange hair, is a whiz at building things, and likes to fry pretend eggs in Clara's play kitchenette.

Calvin manages to be incredibly loud and incredibly quiet at the same time. He's also incredibly sweet.  He also has big cheeks.

Clara loves all three, but especially Calvin, since he is closest in age to her.  She admires him because he is bigger, faster, and more street-smart than she.  I imagine that, to really young toddlers, Calvin projects the world-weary image of a late toddler/early little boy:

"Hey Kid, I see they got you eating salmon.  It's all a sham, Kid.  Don't believe 'em when they tell you it's delicious.  Salmon is the grossest thing around."

Clara has taken her share of knocks from all three.  She's been launched into a wall while trying to jump on Gracie's bed with them.  Calvin lovingly head-butted her when she was a mere six months old, and wind-milled her into a tile floor at a restaurant just a few months ago.  Jake has flown into serious rages when she wrecked his train tracks and toppled his Lego towers, but managed, with heroic effort, not to pummel her.

Clara is still pretty small, but she's getting to the age where she can give as good as she gets. She doesn't hit or push yet (a good sign--she values her physical well-being), but she can shriek like a banshee.

She was finishing two tofu-dogs with melted cheese when the kids showed up.  Strapped into her booster seat, she wasn't able to participate as joyfully in their arrival as she would have liked.  Nor was she able to wrest her baby away from Gracie, who had found it in a corner and took it for a spin on the pink Barbie Big Wheel.  I couldn't successfully communicate to Clara the subtle points of politeness and sharing because she was yelling and thrashing around so much.  I finally asked Gracie if she would mind giving Clara her baby so we could have some peace.

We watched movies, did an art project and had Greek yogurt with Cheerios (Jake thought the Greek yogurt tasted like "gross baby slime" until I explained the Greeks were big, strong, handsome men who lived across the ocean.  Then he thought it was delicious.).

We played hide-and-seek.  Of course, I was the seeker a disproportionate number of times, and my pelvis nearly cracked in half running up and down the stairs with Clara on my hip.  The screams and the look of terror on Jake and Grace's faces when I threw open the closet door to growl at them was worth it, though.