Friends Real and Imaginary

Tonight's story is a tale of friendships both real and imaginary.  Hahahaha.  I can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but Isaac has a bevy of imaginary friends that pop in and out of our lives on a frequent basis.  I'm not sure when exactly this started, but I do know that I find it endlessly entertaining to hear the stories he makes up about his friends and I wish I could paint a picture of the way his brow furrows and his face squinches up and his head tilts to the side when he's thinking really hard and trying to come up with something on the fly.  Which is most definitely the way his friends' names came to be.  Hahaha.  In our rotating cast of characters, we have Tupper, Epper, Tipper, Epker, Kipper, and Tronkos.  Amongst other random ones.  Hahaha.  Just this afternoon -- while I was dozing in and out of a much needed nap thanks to Isaac still being our resident sleep terrorist at night -- he played a rousing game of Hide-and-Seek with Tupper for a little over an hour.  Hahahahahaha.  He certainly has an active imagination.

(Not Tupper.)

Along with that imagination is a brand of determination that will most likely serve him very well in life.  As it is, he's already putting it to good use in preschool.  For the last several weeks, Isaac has been begging me to have a playdate with a friend from school.  When I didn't get on top of that as quickly as he would have liked, he stepped up and took over for me by inviting his friend to come home with us in our car after preschool one afternoon.  Hahaha.  After explaining that doing so would be more like kidnapping than playdating, I finally convinced him that kids can't set up playdates by themselves and that I would get in touch with his friend's mom myself.  Apparently he didn't trust me to do that either, because the very next day, when I picked him up from school and saw the other mom, I went over to introduce myself and tell her how much Isaac would love to have her son come over and play sometime and her response was,  "Oh yes!  I know -- he told me this morning!"  I guess he was just too excited to wait for me to get my act together, and when he saw his opportunity he took it!  Hahahaha.

(Don't let those hands in the pocket and nonchalant stance fool you -- he was so excited he was practically bursting at the seams.)

Last Friday was the much-anticipated day.  He started setting up for the playdate on Thursday after school (he decided riding the Plasma cars in the house would be the funnest thing to do) and he even checked to make sure we'd have a good snack for after they were finished playing (he even hid two Danimals smoothies in the back of the fridge so that the other kids couldn't get to them before the morning).  It was really quite adorable.  When Friday morning finally rolled around, he asked roughly every 5 or 10 minutes if it was time for the playdate to start and believe me when I say that 10 AM took FOREVER to arrive.  ;)  Thankfully, the hype lived up to his wildest dreams and he spent the happiest hour and a half of his life hanging out with his buddy and convinced me to take a picture of them at the end so that the other kids would be able to see his friend, too.    Isaac certainly keeps things interesting over here and I wouldn't have it any other way.  :)