Mom's-eye View of Friendship

So, I waited a full month of best friendship before writing that post on the two little girls who had picked my girls as friends.

And of course, not a day after I post it do they start shaking things up.

First, Lilly came home and told me that A had been running, and Lilly had gotten tired. So she switched with Dulce. She went and sat with N while Dulce ran with A.

All well and good. Except they didn't tell their friends.

And I had wondered why N had called Lilly by the wrong name at the end of the day.

So, I had a brief chat with them about how you can't just go switching places and not telling people. You could hurt someone's feelings. (I have no idea if this is true, but the behavior seemed odd to me, so I put on my mom pants and just told them not to do it. Like I do with all things I don't understand. Because I'm awesome. And by awesome, I mean totally afraid and confused by the nature of twins.)

I mean, do they think they're interchangeable on a deep level?

So, the next day, they decided they'd had so much fun with the other one's friend, that they'd just switch for realsies. And this time they told the other girls.

Now, I only get one side of this, but it appears everyone is mostly okay with that.

Only then A started getting more attention than N. And N is fading into the background, even though I can see at pickup that she doesn't want to.

And I'm feeling more sad about that than I should. Which is actually what this entry is about.

They are their own people, they can make their own friends and choose to hang out with whomever they want for whatever amount of time, so why do I have so many feels about this?

I'm keeping my trap shut. It's not my job to encourage either of the twins to continue to hang out with N on the playscape if that's not what they're into, but damn if I don't want to. And what about K and K? The girls have decided those other girls are their 'outside of school' friends. Does that hurt their feelings? Probably not; they're four. But I worry. I mean, my grownup feelings would maybe be hurt, I don't even know.

And now they're talking about J and A2. They say that J and A2 are now their bffs, and N and A are not.

And I'm all, "LISTEN, YOU CAN GO AROUND TOSSING FRIENDSHIP ASIDE LIKE THAT. YOU'RE HURTFUL!"

Only I don't say that and they're not hurtful. They're four and they've got a lot of friends. I'm super happy about that. They're not bullying or being bullied, and gosh darn it, people like them.

I'm just treading water here as waves of juvenile friendship that I never expected and don't know what to do with hit me.

I'm just over here minding my nevermind. I'll let it out here instead of telling them about how I feel about their friendship because it's not my business and I don't even know anything anyway.

I was not prepared for this.

This whole friends outside of the family thing.

Time to man up and get over it all. On the inside as well as the outside.

Good job, girlies. I'm proud of you for being nice and likable and having friends and liking people.

And that's that.