Sam

Abby had a sort of milestone this past weekend. Last week at Vacation Bible school, she made a new friend. That’s not the new part though, since she makes friends whenever we go somewhere with a play area. The new part is that she and this friend (her name is Sam) exchanged phone numbers on the last day of VBS. And she came home that night asking us over and over if she could call her new friend.

Have I mentioned that we had not met this girl or her parents? My friend Kristi drove the girls to and from VBS last week since it was at her church and it was in the mornings while I’m working. I was stumped – there really wasn’t any reason that Abby couldn’t call her friend, but it just seemed… odd. Ron actually made the call and talked to Sam’s mom. Turns out she knew the girls had exchanged numbers and had met Abby at VBS. So Abby and Sam talked for a while on the phone. How my little girl got old enough to be chatting away on the phone with a girl we didn’t know is beyond me! I realized at that moment that this is probably just the beginning of things to come since she’ll be meeting lots of kids we don’t know at school this year. Preschool was different since we saw the other kids and their parents every day at drop-off and pick-up and got to know them. And the only new friend she made in kindergarten last year also happens to go to our church, so meeting him and his parents was easy. She did meet some new kids on the bus, but nobody that she was so interested in as to exchange numbers.

Two things came out of this. First was Abby’s first playdate with a kid that we’d never met. Sam originally invited Abby to her house, but after I got on the phone with Sam’s mom, we ended up deciding to have Sam come over to our house since we live on opposite ends of town and our house happens to be right near a mall. The other thing that came out of it is something that never occurred to me until Saturday night at McDonalds when Abby gave our phone number to a little girl that she’d met 10 minutes earlier in the play area.

Uh-oh.

Abby now understands that she has to ask Ron or I for permission to give out our phone number, to anyone. At least, I hope she understands that. Something I’d never thought about when we taught her our phone number was explaining when it’s appropriate to give it to other people. Whoops.

Sam came over yesterday afternoon for about an hour. She is a very polite, sweet little girl and her mom seems very nice also. She has a 3-year-old sister who wanted very badly to stay and play too. After a lot of coaching all weekend, Abby did do well with letting her friend choose what to play – Abby decided they would play a game but let Sam choose which game, etc. Sam didn’t seem to mind and I didn’t want to butt in. They played a game, played outside (for all of 10 minutes), colored, and watched a Dora video on Abby’s VideoNow Jr.

I don’t know if we’ll get together with Sam again since she lives just too far for it to be convenient, but it would be nice to get to know her and her family better. Now that I’ve survived this first phone call and playdate, I’m thinking that I’m doing quite well and just might be ready for another – someday.