Hangin' Out

Dean's out of town this weekend, so I picked MonkeyBoy up from daycare at 5:30 and headed for home. It's even hotter today than it was yesterday, and the house was like an oven after being closed up all day. As we pulled in to the carport, he spotted D, our next door neighbour and M, her 12 or 13-year-old son, sitting out front on our shared patch of lawn - it's the least hot spot available at this time of day. As we were getting out of the car, MonkeyBoy announced "I have to go over dare, I have lots of fings to tell dem."

Fortunately, they think he's absolutely adorable and have no problem chatting with him at great length. He showed them what he's learned in gymnastics - somersaults and something that vaguely resembles a cartwheel as performed by jellyfish - rode his scooter and his trike, told them about his day at daycare, what he ate for lunch, what he thought of the cool truck across the street ... and worked "You can say dat again!" into the conversation as often as possible. I tried, a few times, to convince him to come into the house with me so I could make dinner, to no avail, until M offered to entertain him for a while. When I left, they were playing catch with an empty water bottle and sharing some awful-looking gum. I kept popping out every few minutes to make sure no one was getting tired of him, while he explored their new van, wrestled with M, flirted with his sister, S, who's almost 16 and quite lovely, discussed the current state of our garden, and explained to a passerby why our dog has such bad breath (he has no hands, so he can't brush his teeth). Then he convinced S to show him her bedroom, and only agreed to come home when, after an hour and a half of socializing, she and her brother had to go to the store. Then, about 15 minutes later, while we were eating (at 7pm), they came back with a Slurpee for him - mixed flavours, even!

Good neighbours are a wonderful thing.