On Making New Friends

Alex: "I already have 2 friends. They are Ethan and Evelyn and they are already too much."
Me: "Dude, if my 2 friends were Ethan and Evelyn, they'd be too much for me too."

Two times a month on post are new classes for Homeschoolers. Friday mornings for 2 1/2 hours they teach the "extras" that are hard to fit in at home: P.E., art, German, and computer science. Throw in a little time for foosball and ping pong and it's a fun day out of the house for mom, er, the kids.

Except...
since we started home schooling last winter, my kids went from (practically) despising each other to actually being *awesome* friends. The turn around has been nothing short of amazing for Ric and I to watch. I don't know if it's that they get 2 more hours of sleep than other school-kids, maybe that there's no rush around in the morning or the afternoon which always led to grumpiness. Maybe part of it is the desire to skee-daddle and make themselves scarce as soon as school is over lest I may call them back down to do more work. Maybe it's just that there's no one else to play with during the day.

Whichever the reason, they've become so close to each other, that when things like this come up, they'd rather stay home and play with each other than get out with all the new kids.

One might say that they're turning into *those* weird HS kids who don't have any friends. But from inside the family, I'm so much happier that they actually love each other, I don't even care.

***Ok, so maybe 10 seconds after I posted this, Evelyn and Alex screamed bloody murder at each other and Alex swore that he'd never play with her ever again for the rest of his life. And then Alex whined the rest of the evening about Ethan's non-judicious use of the Lego atoms we built in Chemistry. Ok, so maybe L-O-V-E is a wee bit too strong a word for what they feel for each other. How about this: sometimes they play nicely. There.