Small Friends

Perhaps not surprisingly, the parents of the Small Girl’s friends are all good friends of ours. It’s all terribly convenient: the Daddies are good chums and often get together for drinks at the weekend, the Mummies are friends and meet over coffee with the children, who are also great mates. And now a new wave of babies are arriving, who are destined to grow up together as best buddies (whether they like it or not).

As often as I can, I try and meet up with my friends during the week so that the children can play whilst we grown-ups compare notes on tantrums and console each other with coffee and solidarity. In practice however, it is rarely that easy.

The Small Girl and I recently met up with one of her Small Friends and her Mummy for lunch at the Shopping Centre. After spending ten minutes queuing up for our sandwiches, the Very Small Boy filled his nappy and I then spent 20 minutes waiting for a baby-change to become free. When I got back, the Small Girls had already finished their lunch, so we spent ten more minutes packing up and clearing away before setting off for a walk. The Small Friend then got into a tussle with a scary-looking toddler with coke-bottle glasses and a ferocious underbite and, with an apologetic look, the Small Friend's Mummy whisked her poor fractious, writhing daughter off home. This caused the Small Girl to go into meltdown at their abrupt departure and for once, I felt sympathetic: my friend and I had, apart from saying “hello”, not actually spoken to each other for the entire duration of the lunch.

It’s often easier to meet at each others’ homes, a prospect that fills the Small Girl with glee (I do wonder why the Small Friends are so excited at the thought of a playdate - mostly, they spend so much time bickering and fighting about sharing that it’s hard to see what any of them actually get from the experience). But the Small Girl is starting to reach the stage now where she plays quite nicely with her girlfriends - we had a lovely playdate at another friend’s house recently, where the two Small Friends wandered off happily together, exploring the garden before disappearing into the house. Some time later, following an anguished cry of “Mummy!”, I found the Small Girl in the bathroom, bent at the waist and wedged firmly, bottom first, into the toilet bowl, arms and legs waving helplessly while her Small Friend looked on in amusement.

When it comes to boys however, the Small Friends’ preference is for arguments; simple disagreements along the lines of “I’m going now”/ “No, stay!”/ “No. I’m going!”/ “No, I want you to stay!” etc. (and hearing these disagreements, I often wonder guiltily what kind of example DH and I might have unintentionally set when bickering about whose turn it is to go to the shop for a pint of milk).

But before they had developed the ability to argue, back when everyone was still in nappies, the Small Girl was most fascinated by seeing little boys having a nappy change, pointing out each time that the Small Friend in question had a willy. One particular friend lent her a pair of his wellington boots for the Irish summer and this led to an amusing conversation about the difference between “wellies” and “willies”. After much confusion, I was most relieved to have cleared it all up – for a while there, I think she thought her Small Friend had two willies.