Friends!

There have always been a lot of kids on our street.  But they were either girls (gross…girl cooties!) or much younger or older than Wm.  But, a few doors down some new folks moved in with a boy just one year older than Wm!  Yesterday evening, for the first time ever, a boy came and rang our doorbell and asked, "can Wm come out and play?" And he did!  By himself!  I couldn't resist sneaking a picture of Wm out engaging in his first neighborhood solo playing (not a some lame "play date" arranged and supervised by an adult - which seems to be the new normal these days).  I should mention that Wm does often play with some of the girls his age and they do come over and ask him to play, but he's never really thrilled with it.  He sort of begrudgingly goes out to play (and never goes over to ask them to play).  He's not a weird hermit or anything. But, this was the first time he had a great time and will likely reciprocate!!

Wm is the tiny speck in a red shirt

We also took Wm to the playground at, what will likely be, his new school.  He was not at all excited about changing schools and had said he didn't want to do ECLIPSE.  After playing on the playground, he declared it "awesome," and was very gung-ho about ECLIPSE.  So I teased him about making up his mind based on a sweet playground and he goes, "No, Mommy, I thought about it last night in bed.  I had lots of thoughts.  I thought of all the positives and negatives. And there were lots of positives and only one negative."  So I asked him what the one negative was and he goes, "leaving all my friends." Then I asked him what the all the positives were and he goes, "awesome playground." We have to send in our acceptance of his ECLIPSE placement by Friday.  I figure we'll wait until the deadline just to make sure everyone is on the same page - but, for now, it seems 99.99% that Wm will be changing schools!