The Meeting of the Toddlers

This past weekend, we had a meeting of the toddlers - HMB met a girl he has heard about (and met once) as well as seen videos of, for about a year now. The girl is my friend Melissa's niece from NYC. For this post, I will call her Brooklyn Niece or BN. She is nine months older than HMB and has more personality than most actresses!

After a softball double-header (of course), me, Chris, HMB, and my mother in law headed over to Melissa's house to hang out and have dinner. But really, Melissa and I were there to see HMB and BN interact! Since we all know HMB has his own personality, we were interested to see how they did together. HMB doesn't go to day care and we haven't been able to go to our playgroup for awhile, so the only kids he interacts with on a regular basis are the kids in the gym kids center (which is about an hour and a half, pretty much Mon-Fri).

When we arrived, BN had just gone down for a nap after an afternoon spent at the waterfront in DC. HMB had not had a nap at all so we finally got him down...and waited for them to wake up and let the fun begin. Despite BN going down for her nap first, HMB was the first the awaken after only an hour of napping. He was in an OK mood, not really that great but I've seen worse! Brooklyn Niece woke up, her parents went into the room (where she was SO NICELY sleeping in a PacNPlay). She told them she "needed a minute". AWESOME! So she stayed in the PacNPlay until she said "I ready" and they came in and got her.

The first few minutes of HMB and Brookyn Niece was precarious, to say the least. BN sat in an arm chair with every possible toy and stuffed animal (including HMB's favorite, the stuffed Cartman doll from South Park). She was playing hard to get! I sat with HMB on my lap at the kitchen table and he started to fling the place mat off the table onto the floor. Brooklyn Niece laughed. He did it again, she laughed again. Brooklyn Niece said "You're so funny, HMB" and the ice was broken!

The rest of the evening was spent with HMB staring at Brooklyn Niece in awe as she serenaded us with a lovely rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star at dinner, and mimicked my husband when he talked to HMB. A good time was had by all!

After reflecting on the evening and talking to Melissa about it, nine months is a big difference, as far as verbal development goes. Brooklyn Niece was singing full songs, HMB can say a lot of words but just started to string two together (No more). But they had a great time together, mostly involving HMB gazing in wonder at Brooklyn Niece's energy and spunk! And HMB attempting to show off a bit with some of his own stunts - he had to win the lady over somehow!

Hopefully we will spend more time with Brooklyn Niece in the future!