Life of Wry

If I were going to try to draw a picture of Peter’s childhood–the activities, events, and people that define his young life–it would include: a fairly steady circle of friends; school (of course) and, related to that, Spanish; definitely baseball; a bunch of family trips; and probably music.  I’d also have to include regular weekend dinners with a certain other one-kid family which have become, more or less, an ongoing, nearly-every-weekend tradition.

If you’re a one-kid family, and especially one that doesn’t have extended family within easy reach, you really rely on friends to help broaden that support base.  We all need our villages, right?  We’ve hung out regularly with a family we met in Peter’s first (and only) season of soccer seven years ago.  Most of the childhood years that Peter will eventually look back on–we hope with fondness, mostly–will undoubtedly include this family, and the absolute best part of this whole deal is the close friendship between Peter and their son.  Friendships can be fickle (don’t we know), especially with kids… especially as they mature and pass through various developmental stages.  In this case, the boys are a year apart, have their own social circles, and are in different places maturity-wise… which could make the friendship hard to sustain…

But, in fact, they’ve been companionable buds all these years.

Which makes these evenings so easy and such a win win.  Parents get to cook, hang out, have a few hours of grown-up conversation, while the boys are totally, happily entertained.  Usually in another part of the house. (Bonus!)

We do eat together, however.  At their house, the dining room table’s big enough for six.  At our house, our table’s small, so we pull out the card table (which is why you only see four place settings above).  But eating together is an important part of the tradition and we’ve had some pretty interesting conversations over the years.

So… it makes sense that this 2011 year-in-pictures thingie includes the traditional weekend dinner with our other one-kid friends.  This particular evening Jim made chicken fajitas, rice & beans and fresh baked oatmeal cookies.  I did appetizers and a weird salad.

Peter’s ringing endorsement: “Dinner was actually good tonight.”