Mental Meanderings

Play Dates, School Friends, and leaving the nest

It's the first week back at school after the mid year holidays and Kaylie was invited for her first real play date. She'd been invited to two birthday parties in the first half of the year but she was invited to a friends house to play after school yesterday.

It seems like a monumental step. She's growing up and the independance of playing at a friends house (without her Mum) seems to me to be huge. Of course she didn't think too much about it. She got to play and had fun but she didn't seem to think it was anything as important as I do. lol

It's strange how my perspective of what she's doing these days is so different from her own. I seem to notice the small things that she takes for granted. To me it was a big step towards her becoming a 'big' girl when she was finally able to clip up her own seat belt. For months it was something we were practicing and she kept getting frustrated because it just wouldn't go in without a bit of pressure added by Mummy. And then one day it did, and since then she's done it herself every time. To me that's a huge step but other than being pleased that she'd finally got it she doesn't see the significance I put in it. lol

I also really loved it when she held Josh's hand while we were out walking one time. They were walking together a few steps ahead of me on their own and it looked adorable but it also made them both seem so much older, so much more grown up and heading away from being my babies.

It's been wonderful to know that Kaylie is making friends at school. Because of my social phobia she gets a fairly strange perspective of friendships at home. I don't really go out much and I don't have people visiting or go over to anyone's house except my mothers. She doesn't see much in the way of an example of social interactions at home so it's been a huge concern for me about her learning these things. That's why I enrolled her (at exhorbitant costs) into 3 year old kindy a couple of years ago, hoping to get an early start on getting her used to the way the world works in that sense.

She's still very shy and reserved. Last year in kindy she made a couple of friends but it was more along the lines of being people she would mix with, blend around, and know their name. She didn't have people she was steadfast with. Anyone she'd play with before school or anyone who would visit with us after school or who's house she could go play at.

By the end of that year she'd grown more comfortable with her school 'friends' and then of course the school year ends and the next year she's mixed with a new group of people. Thankfully there were a couple of the people she'd grown to know in Kindy in her new class. In the first term she made fast friends with a boy who seems very much like her. They are the best of friends and it was wonderful to know she'd made a connection like that.

Now she's starting to really spread out amongst her school friends. She knows them all and they all know her and talk to her. She can still be a little reserved but at lot less so than she used to be and I think she's finally starting to come out of shell. I'm a little wary of next year. I'm praying that she and her best friend will be in the same class.

I guess I should just be content that she's enjoying school and making friends. Next year is six months away after all. Twenty school weeks to go (Nineteen and a half actually ) It's just amazing how much she's growing up.

I've also found as the school years progressed I'm becoming more comfortable around the other parents. There are two mothers I enjoy chatting with particularly and one of the fathers I'm starting to get used to. I tend to sidle into conversations in the hopes of making friends. As a writer I've gotten into the habit of being in the position to overhear conversations and I'm finally finding the confidence to also take part on more and more occassions.

I sense if I was free of this phobia I'd be a real social butterfly. I love getting out and about and it's only this stupid phobia that holds me back from all of that. I'm a Gemini and they thrive of social activity and deep down I know I truly live up to that sense on the inside. I just wish I had the courage to live up to it on the outside too.

But, like Kaylie, I'm making leaps and bounds in that sense. We all grow, and keep growing up, no matter how old we get. It's only because children do it so rapidly that we notice it in them.

I've talked all about the way Kaylie's grown but Josh grows even faster at this stage. The only thing he's not seeming to grow with is language. Or rather he is, he understands a great deal of language and does (when he wants to) what he's told. He depends a lot on body language but also understand many words. But he's yet to say anything. No words at all from his mouth and he's almost a year and a half now. I know, someday he'll come out in full sentences and I'll wonder why I ever worried but because I see him growing so quickly in other area's his not talking is something that seems really significant at the moment.

Anyway, I've yarned your ears off over and over and all about these rather mundane things. Me, me, me and my kids. lol How boring for you all. Hopefully the observations mixed in there make this half interesting. I'm glad to be able to talk about it all because it at least gets it out of my head, lol, I know, evil aren't I, to be getting it out of mine but forcing it into yours.