playdate with Frances

We invited Frances to come over on Tuesday for a summer playdate. Sebastian was so thrilled at the idea of getting to just hang out with his favorite friend for a day - so sweet.  Last summer I didn't make enough of an effort to get in touch with Seb's friends' parents and plan meetups, and I really wanted to make sure I did a better job this summer. He gets a lot of joy out of playing soccer with his friends and having them over to our house.

We picked Frances up at 9 and came back home, and predictably the children wanted to go immediately over to the school field. We took over a pair of soccer balls, a basketball, and Liesl's bicycle, along with water bottles, and they stayed there for the next three hours. Three! Happily, their friends Nathan and Wyatt also showed up at the field, and so they had a good little scrimmage going.  Liesl got bored and tired and hot, and so I set her up at the tree-shaded picnic table with some watercolor paints. She happily dabbled away, with Nathan's sister Diya for company.

We came back home for a lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and apples, and then the children built some Lego structures before moving on to some very intense games of Uno and Spot It. It goes without saying that Frances brings her game face to everything she does, including card games mostly based on luck, which just killed me. It was awesome.

And then they went outside for more play - riding scooters, soccer and basketball and football and lacrosse, and baseball - combined with spraying and jumping through the sprinkler - until finally at 3 pm, I said, "You know, Frances, I think maybe it's time for you to be heading home. Maybe you could use some downtime before your flight tonight, or maybe you've got some packing to do."  It took another 45 minutes to break up the party and actually get in the car.

All in all, it was AWESOME. Seb was super happy. It was the longest playdate on record. :)  I told Frances at the beginning of the day that she could ask to go home anytime she got tired or just wanted her own space, and we'd be happy to drive her ... with most of Seb's friends, this approach means that they generally ask to go home after a few hours. Just last week, one playdate ended after two hours with the other child saying that he was tired and hot and wanted to go home and watch tv.  So it's good to know that my child isn't the only one with seemingly inexhaustible energy.  Here's to more such long, joyous, active, summer playdates.