2004-11-08
A few weeks ago I sent this email to a friend:
Clay (we) had his (our) first play date Saturday. One of his little daycare buddies came over. His father (and little sister) stayed while the boys played for a couple of hours. The mother stayed home to "clean the house" (I bet she just wanted to unwind, to which I can relate). It went surprisingly well. The father was nicer than we expected and it was super cute to see the boys play.
Made me realize that Clay is much more verbal than J. I suspect J is the more typical of the age (the boys were born a week apart) because the father kept expressing surprise at Clay's articulateness. B noticed that J's sentences were all things like "It's a car" or "It's a train" whereas Clay said things like "We made you devilled eggs. Do you like devilled eggs?" and "Thank you for coming to play with me." All very crispy enunciated whereas J was kind of mumbly and borderline intelligible.
I suppose it's inevitable to be a little competitive about this stuff but I think we are especially so because the bulk of the parents at our daycare (this father included) work together in this one lab/office at [local big deal university] and are high-powered PhDs and MDs. The back window of this father's car is plastered with decals of various institutions which strikes me as pretentious but is probably mostly insecurity as he was nice as could be in person.
As a group these people have been pretty unpleasant to us--just unfriendly and clique-ish at pickup and dropoff. I guess it's because so many of them work together but would it kill them to be bit open to others?? So, it's a little satisfying to see our kid a bit ahead of theirs developmentally.
In two weeks we're having a potluck picnic at our house for all the daycare families--kind of an impulse idea to help out the director which we semi regret having suggested but it will probably be fine. I'm thinking of having copies of my resume handy to pass out to all the guests....
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So, yesterday was the party and it was quite successful. Clay was so into it, so excited in anticipation that he awoke during the night for the first time in weeks. Early in the day as we were getting ready, Clay said that he was going to share his toys (something I guessed B had prompted him to consider). I said that was great. Then Clay went over to a group of trucks and said, "This one I'm going to play with. This one I'm going to play with. This one I'll share. This one I'm going to play with. This one I'm going to play with. This one I'll share."
We hadn't asked people to RSVP so had no idea how many to expect. The daycare director, Mrs. M, had said on Friday that there would be "Twelve." Twelve families? Twelve people? She said, "Twelve people." She was being kind of weird so I didn't push it but I wondered if this included her and her husband and the other teachers. It was kind of disappointing to think so few people were coming but we'd found at our last party that there were so many people it was hard for us to really talk to anyone so we figured it was just as well and we'd have more opportunity to get to know the few who came.
Well, there was a huge turnout. Including us and a couple of families we invited who aren't part of the daycare, there were 17 kids and 25 adults. It was sunny and 70 degrees and people seemed to enjoy themselves. We met a few people we'd never even seen before. Mostly they were parents of babies whom Clay, of course, knew. I kind of like how he has this life independent of his family.
Many of the parents were really nice. A couple even commented to B privately on the snobby nature of some of the other parents, having wondered if they'd said/done anything to earn their contempt (as we've wondered). And some of the unpleasant ones managed to remain unpleasant even as they enjoyed our hospitality. Ah, well.
But it was great and Clay had so much fun. He was in fine form--wearing his red plastic firefighter hat the entire time and just generally being friendly and sharing his toys in an admirable, if not flawless, manner. Despite his introverted parents, he's intensely social, loves being around people. He was predictably crestfallen when it ended, though Mrs. M and one of the other teachers stuck around a bit late to help clean up and Clay got to show them his room.
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