Friends

 These are some pictures of Penny and her friend Ally at the local playground. For Penny's birthday, we'd invited her gymnastics class which at that time consisted of 3 other girls in her age group and 2 in the mommy-and-me class. The only person to rsvp was Renee with her daughter Ally from the mommy-and-me class, so we basically just had a play date with cupcakes for Penny's birthday. Since then we get together at least once a week, and most weeks two times. Ally is two, but they are about the same size so they seem to be the same age. They get along great. It's reassuring to be around a two year old to realize that Penny had similar social skills at that age, and see how far she has come in a year. Penny really looks forward to getting together each week, and they sometimes "write" letters to each other that us moms mail for them. It's too cute.

Here they are about to slide simultaneously.

But Penny jumps the gun and goes first. Unrelated: she has chosen to wear this Lightening McQueen shirt for several get-togethers causing me to feel compelled to reassure Renee that Penny does in fact own other clothes.

Swinging together.

"Playing Hands" at the hand wall.

Both skeptical of Renee and her camera.

In the gazebo.

Finally smiling for Ms. Renee.

Conversing in the tunnel.

Yesterday we got there early and saw two other friends from gymnastics: Abigail (4) and Anna (3).  They started yelling, "There's Penny," almost before I had her out of the car. They go to the playground every Friday with their "Grandy" - their great-grandfather who keeps them each Friday. He used to be Chair of the Education Department at Troy, so we talk sometimes. Friday was the first time I'd ever seen Penny go off and play with someone by herself like this. I almost could have gone and sat down and let her play except that she would look for me to "check-in" every other slide or so. Ally's too young to be willing to play without parental involvement, so Renee and I are usually out there with them. Anyway, it didn't last long, but it was a glimmer of things to come I'm sure.

Later in the morning after Ally got there, another deep conversation in the big tunnel. 

It's so fun to watch Penny grow and change and develop her social skills.