Friends Make the World Better

This was a good weekend. There was nothing extravagant, nothing extraordinary and nothing that cost a lot of money to create a memorable experience.

But we spent time with friends. Both AJ and Teddy had play dates with different friends Saturday morning. We dropped AJ at his friend's house while Teddy's friend Max came to our house to play. I don't know that I'll ever get tired of watching Teddy and Max play together. My absolute favorite is when Max puts his face inches away from Teddy's face and makes Teddy giggle. Teddy fell over from laughing so hard at Max being silly this weekend. Teddy also finished Max's banana (yet again) because Max saw Teddy eying it up.

I think part of what makes these play dates so special is that I honestly hadn't expected Teddy to be having friends over for play dates. Sure, we have our family friends over for play dates, but that's not the same as Teddy having his friend over to play. Maybe I thought it would happen at some point down the road, but not at this stage.

And yet it has.

I swear Teddy is more talkative and babbles more when he's playing with Max. I also swear that it carries over when Max leaves. It's like it opens up Teddy's communication because he's so excited and having so much fun, and that muscle memory sticks around for a few hours or even days.

On Sunday we managed to get to church together as a family, which is a rare occurrence because sometimes it leaves us feeling more frustrated than fulfilled. Today wasn't one of those days. Yes, Teddy still managed to crawl under the pew and spent a good portion of Mass walking everywhere with Dave. But the folks behind us offered encouraging words to both Dave and I. There were moments where I had my arms around both boys that I wasn't trying to wrangle or contain them and felt contentment instead. There was a song after communion that really resonated with me even though I can't remember any of it at the moment.

Our day ended with our family friends coming over, along with another friend of mine, for dinner and cuddling the littlest babe. Their daughter is absolutely fantastic with our boys, so Teddy and AJ were entertained while us adults got a bit of time to catch up. And then we did silly stuff, like spin Teddy in our papasan chair and put an 11-year-old athletic girl on my back for a quick ride to show off our new kid carrier. (I will say that Teddy actually felt light when he climbed on after the 11-year-old child. Never knew that could happen.) The laughter, the conversation, the ease, the comfort ... everything is better with friends.