Friends

 Tuesday we had our sweet "O-Liv" (the girl I keep Mon&Tue) come over and the kids were thrilled to have her back to play. It is the cutest thing to just see them rushing to the door when she comes. They are such social beings, and Jman more and more asks me about seeing friends. Liv as well has started to ask about a particular friend more and more. I know that they get  a lot of the social drive  from me, but it is so sweet to see how it plays out in their little selves. When we went freecycling and the lady came out to help me with the item I was taking, he asked her "Do you have any boys I can play with?"- my sweet little boy LOVEs being with others and I know I need to make more of an effort to get him some play dates!

 I also got to keep a couple of my friend's little boys as she had a Dr's appointment to keep. Even though sharing and taking turns with different toys and stuff can be hard, Liv and Jman interact with eagerness and great exuberance when they are with others, children and adults alike. In some ways they are a little too friendly- they don't have personal space, as well as wanting to be center stage- especially Liv right now, she loves getting all the attention, but that is her age too!

 (RE: personal space. I still remember one day , during a lesson about personal space in our communications class my freshman year of college, a girl I had gone to high school my senior year with shared how I had in fact demonstrated that Europeans, Italians in particular, have less of a personal space since we had become acquainted in our English class! I was mortified for I never realized that even this girl, someone I was friendly but not close to, thought I was getting 'too close' when talking to others; I asked not-yet-hubby about it and he said it was mostly true, but that he loved it! lol!). 

 Here is a picture of the kids on the couch watching the beginning of 'Land Before Time' (a dinosaur movie). 

The staying still on the couch didn't last very long! I put a double quilt on the floor later (no carpet) for them to have a picnic and eat their lunch. Then it was a wonderful mayhem of crumbs and toys and laughter. Oh, but so much fun, especially for the kids you know! like that wonderful movie says "no one is a failure when he has friends"....and no one- including mommies- worries about any silly ol' messes when you are with friends!

Precious time, precious friends

I was going to say that I have been wasting my precious time today by just reading people's blogs, mostly people I know IRL, and commenting on their posts, or just saying 'hey'.

Thank I stopped and thought: no I am not wasting time. This is time I put on relationships. Although true, it would be infinitely better to sit down and chat with them (and that is what I decided to do, I called one friend after reading her latest post and said "I need to get together and visit with you"), I still get to see glimpse of their hearts or at least, for those who don't write their very heart's secrets like I might sometimes, I get to know what is going on and catch again a partial view of what is affecting their heart, everyday, every ordinary day.

So, IMHO, it wasn't wasted time. It was preciously devoted time for my friends, for relationship building. It is different this 'building' relationships through internet, such a vehicle that sometimes generates much distrust and for very good reason. I guess it is kinda of like living in the world, uh? Much evil and bad, but so surprisingly there is also lots of good too.

Like I said, I rather get together and chat, but please post a comment, drop me a line through email. It means so much, doesn't it? Thank you for all that read my blog and for those who have told me they do (and even enjoy it!phew!)

BTW, anyone else having trouble w/ the word verification thing on blogger when you leave comments. It took me twice as long to read everyone's blog and comment b/c I had to do word verification three times before it will register that I was copying it correctly. blogger-problems, you never know what will hit you next.