Sunday, July 13, 2008

The joy of being abandoned

Sometimes, I take TLM out to a playdate and she spends a whole hour wanting to sit on my lap; sometimes, her little friends visit us and she spends a whole hour trying to prevent them from getting their eager little hands on her precious toys. But when I take her to her friend's 3rd birthday party at one of those preschool-oriented indoor playgrounds, and I barely see her for 2 hours, that's what I call a good time.

Out of the 20 kids there, she knew three of them well (one of them being the birthday boy). So well, in fact, that as soon as they showed up she ran up to kiss them. Then she circled the kiddie town in her ride-on, stopping at my ankles every few laps to say hi and steal my snacks, came back in time to sing Happy Birthday and eat cake, and then I didn't see her again until we were all kicked out of the joint.

I don't know about you other parents, but that's the kind of playdate I like.

6 comments:

Amanda said...

I like those kind of parties. Even more if the other parents are good value and we end up having a great old chat while our little darlings are tearing around doing their thing. Unfortunately the parents I hit it off with seldom seem to be the parents of the children my kid really likes and she fights tooth and nail when I suggest inviting them to her parties. She just doesn't seem to view it as a priority that *I* should have congenial people to chat to;)

Violet said...

What I find wins TLM over is if my parent friends have great toys and their kids don't mind sharing them. Of course, TLM is still not so good at sharing her own toys...

Jon said...

I still have fuzzy memories of my dad hitting some kid at one of my birthday parties. Well, a moderate spanking....too bad i deleted my old posts, since I wrote about it. Granted, the kid was really, REALLY misbehaving. Not one of my better childhood memories, and no, my dad isn't a psycho ;-)

Violet said...

jon: gawd, that's a bit extreme. People normally shy away from reprimanding other people's kids when the parents are present. But it sounds like the kid your dad spanked really deserved it!

Angela said...

Yes sounds like a nice break.
The other play dates it is too much work to play

Daddy L said...

That sounds perfect to me.