Play on

Chloë played with someone today! Like, with interaction and dialogue and everything! I'm so excited you'd think I made it happen myself. But no: we took a walk to the park this afternoon, because it was relatively lovely out, by which I mean mid-40s and sunny though windy. Chloë wanted to play on the playset with the blue slides, then the one with the red ones, then the one with the blue ones again because "I don't like the red twisty slide as much as the blue twisty slide." When we tramped back, we found a solitary other girl playing. She was a few years older than Chloë, but happily took her up the ramp and told her not to slide down the broken slide, then convinced her to slide down the very tall one (she did want my hand), and then to follow her on a romp around the playset.

Maia and I stayed out of the way while Chloë and the girl ran around, argued about which slide to go down, and decided the section under the tallest ramps was a bedroom. When I decided Maia's hands were too cold and told Chloë we'd be going soon, she protested, "We were going to take a nap!" like this was a good thing. I was totally charmed. Not enough to prevent me from buckling Maia in and then going to collect her, though.

"Want to do one more thing with me?" the other girl said to Chloë.

"Okay," I said, when Chloë looked at me. "One more thing." They ran off to do it, and I marveled at how momlike I felt and how kidlike she seemed. My big girl.