New Kid on the Block

After we moved into our new house, my only regret was that E had a really good friend who lived right down the street in our previous location.  They would play together every day after school and wreak havoc on the neighborhood until dusk.  It was pretty much perfect.  My conscience was assuaged by the fact that E had already met a couple of neighborhood kids in the new locale while D was renovating.  The boys were 7 and 9, respectively, so I was fairly certain that he would get along with them well.

Unfortunately, I didn't account for the vagaries of boy games.  After playing with said boys a couple of times, E refused to go down the street to look for them any more.  When I asked why, he replied that they played games with names that he didn't recognize, and worse, of which he did not know the rules.  Now, granted, his 2nd grade class was ridiculously tightly knit.  They picked up phrases, dances, and apparently game preferences.  And to E, if kids don't talk about Pokemon and Go-gos, they're speaking a foreign language.

So he was spending his summer days complaining that he was bored (which he scaled back dramatically when he realized bored = Mom will find something unpleasant for you to do) and asking us to play with him.  Which we did.  But if you've ever tried to be a stay-at-home parent for an energetic 8-year-old on his summer vacation, you'll know that D (however awesome I happen to think he is) is only human and eventually needs a break.  And if you've never come home from a full day of work to have said 8-year-old demand your attention in a game of Bakugans, you'll never understand why I set timers beforehand.  Although my parents have a pool, there are a finite number of minutes a child may spend in it when it's 100 degrees in the shade.

This is how desperate all 3 of us were getting: E was trying to write out some rules for a game that he had dreamed up, and upon getting frustrated by his (what he thought of as) poor handwriting, he yelled "I wanna go back to school." After the inevitable responses by his parents (which I shall not repeat), I printed off some math problems and multiplication tables.  He was overjoyed and sat down to diligently compute until dinner time.  I'm not kidding.

Salvation came in the form of a friend from out of town.  He happened to be walking up to our front door when aforementioned neighborhood boys were loitering in the street.  They apparently felt brave enough to accompany him to our front door, where they inquired as to E's presence.  I hastily bundled them inside and up to E's room (after they asked permission of their respective families...I wasn't as creepy about it as it sounds, I promise).

He didn't eat dinner that night.  They spent the rest of the evening running in and out of the house, up and down to the backyard pirate ship/treehouse, destroying E's room, and leaving toys strewn all over the place.  The next day, I came home from work and they were exploring the park on the other side of our backyard fence, utilizing the walkie-talkies I had bought D for his bday/Father's day, barricading themselves inside E's room, and generally making a big, noisy mess.

And I couldn't be happier for my poor lonely little only child.