Stuff We Can't Always Fix

Sometimes when I take the kids to school in the morning and we walk into the classroom, if a lot of the other kids are already there, when we walk through the door several of the girls will yell, happily, "Milo! Milo's here! Milo!"

I feel terrible when this happens because there are two kids who walked through that door, not just one.

This afternoon Jake and I went together to pick up the kids from school. They were outside on the playground. I looked around for the kids. I saw Milo playing with two girls at the bottom of a hill near some trees. They were playing some elaborate game that I didn't quite understand. Milo was pretending to catch them. Each girl would say, "My turn, Milo! Me next!"

Nora was blowing bubbles by herself.

This makes me worry a little bit. But she doesn't seem to care. So should I?

Then, this evening, our next door neighbors returned home from a vacation. Milo was in the park with Jake. Nora was with me in front of our house. The girls saw Nora and excitedly ran over to her. The younger one, who is 5, hugged Nora. Nora hesitated, and then hugged her back. It was sweet. I felt better.

When the kids started school at 2.75, their teachers told me that Nora seemed to enjoy relating to the adults better than the other children. She didn't insert herself into social situations. She relied on Milo a lot. Now, Nora is not so shy anymore. She'll pretty much tell anybody anything about herself, as long as that person is an adult. I have noticed that in many of the pictures that come home from school, though, Nora is with Milo. The two of them seem to rely on each other socially. Nora more than Milo.

I hope she'll be okay, and happy in school, and have friends of her own. I wonder if this will be harder if she is in a separate classroom from Milo, or easier. I don't know.