Monday, July 19, 2010

Playdate RIP

I am almost ready to officially call a close to our "playdate" lives. One, I think that the kids are a little old and tend simply to say "I have a friend coming over" rather than "I have a playdate." More though, our summer has been filled with a much more fluid type of friend play.

The neighbors hired a babysitter to stay home with their kids (8,6,5) this summer - and so almost every day the kids are playing together. Until this week, our mornings have been filled with summer school - but immediately after lunch either Allison and Jacob are knocking on the neighbor's door or Grace and Lucas are knocking on ours. (unfortunately - we have no counterpart to their oldest son, Ben, though Allison once helpfully offered to let him play with Astro).

It's odd that (generally speaking) having 4 kids in the house is less work than two. Typically, the girls are off doing one thing and the boys another - happy to play with someone to whom they are not related. And today - Allison and Grace cleaned and organized Allison room (closet included) so they could set up a play shop and then they took turns alternatively being shopkeeper and shopper. They even emptied the coins out of Allison's piggy bank and got a notebook to keep track of sales.

It took me a little while to get used to, and my biggest gripe may be that Allison and Jacob always offer to provide the snacks, but overall I think I like "playdate"-less world a bit better.

3 comments:

Sue said...

Sounds much like it was with Jenny and Jeff, and later Ryan. Good times, good memories. I'm so glad to hear Allison's having a good time with Grace.

jamie said...

Yeah - I was prepared to take back everything I wrote when there was a knock on the door at 7:50am this morning.

Sue said...

What? Did that wake your kids up? If they're up already let them play. Then in the afternoon send them all next door so you can take a nap!