Emmett's First Friends

Towards the end of this past summer, I watched Emmett play with a little girl who lives next door to my parent's house.  Due to the pandemic, this really was the first time that Emmett had the chance to play with someone his age and he was absolutely fascinated with her.  It dawned on me that I would finally have the time and energy to start arranging play dates for Emmet this fall once his three older siblings returned to full-time school for the first time in 1.5 years.  The only problem was that all of my friends who are mothers of my children's friends were all done having babies by the time I had Emmett.  As a result, this meant that I needed to make some new friends who had little boys around the same age as my little guy.  Luckily, there were two moms from church with little boys.  One woman name Jordan is someone who I have known for years, but have never really been good friends with her since we didn't have any children who overlapped in age.  The other one, named Hollie, is someone who moved into our ward during the pandemic and who I only knew a little bit since she was one of Lia's Young Women leaders.  

After school started, I reached out to both ladies and asked if they wanted to join me for a park and picnic play date while the weather was still warm in September.  Only Hollie was able to join me and we had a great time.  I really enjoyed getting to know her and Emmett was thrilled to make two friends since she has a 3-year old boy named Luke and a 1-year old boy named Calvin.  Since this play date in the park, we have gotten together several times and Emmett now talks about his friends, "Wuke" and Calvin all the time.  Although Emmett plays much better with Luke at this time since they are both older and much more mature than Calvin, he really quickly grasped onto the concept of having friends and started wanting to see them and play with them on a regular basis.  He even has me add this request to play with them into his bedtime prayer several times a week.  It really warms my heart.  Although most of our playdates have taken place at a park or at Hollie's house, we did venture out to the mall today to give the kids a chance to play at Wiggle Works for 1.5 hours before eating lunch in the food court together.  Included above is a darling picture that I managed to take of Emmett and Luke as they climbed around on one of the many apparatuses at Wiggle Works.  I hope these two little guys will stay good friends for many years to come...