The playdate's 3 amigos

Angela and I went to Cindy's parents' big house for Monday's playdate so that we could see Ethan for the first time and so Zachary could play with some kids during this month's "confinement" for Cindy. Tobey was talking about "the gate" (or two!) that we would have to pass through as soon as we got closer to the gated neighborhood. "Oh! There's nothing!" as we passed the guard house and the housing density in the exclusive hillside neighborhood dropped to 0.

Anyway, these 3 boys have been getting together for playdates for a little over a year now I think, since they were 1.5 (or 1 for Zachary). For the longest time, they were doing the toddler thing: playing in parallel. We used to joke about all our efforts to get together so they would have social interaction and then they all just play on their own. (Although, we knew the playdate was for OUR social interaction as much as theirs.)

Recently, now that Christopher and Tobey are 2.5 and Zachary just turned 2, they are more interactive. I think the speaking thing has something to do with it. Tobey is just catching up in conversation with Christopher and Zachary is saying lots of words too. Be it the familiarity with each other or their age, they are starting to interact now, being able to make each other laugh and sharing (and stealing) toys from each other.

For whatever reason on Monday, they took their interaction to a whole new level. We guessed that it was the roominess and open space of Cindy's parents' house that led to a mutiny-like craziness for the 3 boys after lunch. We moms were still eating and the boys were in the next room with all the toys. We heard tons of laughing, some joyous screaming and some "whoa!"s which caught our attention. The boys were throwing toys up in the air (good thing all the younger siblings/babies were out of the room!) or onto the nice glass end tables. After blatant breaking of the rules, Christopher and Tobey both got timeouts/naughty corners and Zachary might have too. And when Tobey got his naughty corner, Christopher and Zachary came to rubberneck like all good buddies do. We asked Christopher and Zachary to let Tobey be by himself during naughty corner but there was a type of sympathetic companionship that seemed to exist now between the 3 of them that didn't exist before. I guess the timeouts bonded them together.

It wasn't long after that Angela and I knew we had to go home for naps lest all heck break loose.

We moms used to think, "Gosh, when are they going to start playing together?" Ah, the days when they would just play in parallel.