Ruby has been spending a little more time with EJ lately. The above picture of her on EJ's rocking horse with some hip glasses shoved up on her forehead was taken last weekend and you can all guess when the bottom picture was taken!

In the last few weeks she has really started to ask us if she could hang out with her friends: EJ and Sade particularly. She sees her buddy Sam a lot during the week when she is with Marie and since this Tuesday she has a new friend, Gael (20months), who Marie now takes care of together with Ruby.

Ruby's always been very interested in hanging out with people. She talks about the time she spends with them and she asks about them. A few days after our friend Jen had spent some time with us, Ruby told us she missed her. She'll often talk about her cousins, even though she doesn't see them that often.

However, talking about them and managing the many social skills required when interacting with her small-people friends are two different things! She's figuring out stuff from sharing toys or playing together to physical proximity and resolving conflict and so forth.

It's been a challenge at times to be supportive of her development in this complicated realm of day to day life. Seeing her yell, hit, push and such is unpleasant--for the other kid, for the parents and for her. She's definitely not a pushover or a kid that will just stay in the background and watch rather than interact.

However, I just tell myself that it's for hard for many of us adults to figure that stuff out calmly and with grace, and so I often remind myself to cut her some slack when she needs it. Besides, it's also really cool to sometimes take cues from her--I mean do we really need to share all of our toys ALL the time? I don't like sharing some of my stuff with David or her, so why should she have to share all her stuff? Right?!

The biggest issue for me however is to find a way to teach her that we don't want her to go through these social interactions because they matter to us or because that's the way it just is ("so buckle up and get on with it already"). I don't want her to say thank you because she knows that'll make me happy and then I'll reward her and we'll all be happy. That to me feels like teaching a kid to become a parrot and/or that what really matters is to please us. You get what I'm saying right--we're trying to teach our kids to understand, feel and have empathy.

Can someone just have a tad more empathy with me though and make sure there is a HUGE pot of coffee brewing before I get up and have to convince my toddler that she would make me feel really happy if she would just get dressed without any hassle once in a while?!