3 is the Loneliest Number

When I was little, my mom had a rule: "You can have one friend over, or you can have three friends over, but you can't have two friends over. With three, somebody always goes home crying."

I have a long list of who went home crying. All too often it was me. Early memories of the Bizarre Friend Love Triangle include (with most likely to cry appearing first):
• me, Molly Peterson, some other girl from Brownies
• Nicki Ferraro, Jenny Cole, me
• Jackie Karr, me, Andrea Holder
• me, John Livington, Laurie Foreman
• me, Emily Davenport, some other friend from camp
• Emily Davenport, me, John Livingston

The list, pathetically, continues into adulthood, but I won't embarrass myself by sharing the overgrown playground politics. Suffice it to say, my mother was right.

So when I heard that the Stephens and the Websters were BOTH having girls, I immediately came up with...three. Small Person Stephens, Merriam Webster (the baby girls' respective prenatal nicknames) and Lucy will be spending a lot of time together, whether they like it or not.

Lucy will have an advantage because of her age and her bossiness, which is a trait she seems more certain to inherit from us than her height. Jason was legendarily bossy; his mother tells of him feeding specific lines of dialog to the other kids in their Star Wars role playing games. And me, well, I was that losing combination of bossy and dorky. I could rule for awhile, until it dawned on the other children what a woeful spaz I was: "Wait a minute, we're eight years old, we should be watching cartoons, not acting out Greek myths with our Barbies." Then they sent me home...crying. Maybe the bossy/oldest combination will work for Lucy, and she can successfully dominate little S.P. and Merriam.

It's paradoxical to wish for her to be the boss, much like it's hard to wish for her to be cool. I want to mitigate her suffering at all costs, yet I want her to be someone I would like (i.e. someone who has suffered a little). Mostly, I guess I should just wish for peace as we parents drink beer and have semi-adult conversations, while Lucy, S.P. and Merriam quietly torture each other, whoever the ruler is.

In Like a Bunny, out Like a Bear

Lucy has graduated from the Bunny room at school. They didn't have a ceremony or anything, but I did get a little teary as I hugged her teacher Rokeya on the last day. Lu was oblivious, desperate to eat some abandoned Cheerios she'd discovered under a high chair, which mysteriously grossed me out (or just embarrassed me? Maybe because they were someone else's Cheerios?).

So now she is Bear. Raaar! At first, the move seemed like going from first grade to high school. They sleep on mats on the floor during naptime. Are they kidding? They sit at little tables and chairs and eat their snacks off a tray. Like...people. I'm so sure. I was certain she'd be demoted back to the Bunny room within days.

But "raar" indeed! She has slept on a mat for four days in a row. Every successive day, she eats more and more of her snack, less distracted by the novelty of a tray to dump on the floor. The best part about the Bear room is the playground, where they spend most of their time. Lu has never even been to the park! She's afraid of grass! Yet every afternoon, about she and 9 other Bears can be seen wandering around the grubby, sandy playground. They dig, climb, push carts around, eat sand, observe the dog in the neighboring yard. They even paint on big sheets of paper taped to the side of the building. On Wednesday, I watched one Bear, smocked in an adult-sized t-shirt to cover her already sand- and snack-soiled clothes, stick a chubby paint brush in her mouth, then flash me a neon-green grin. They assure me the paint is non-toxic.

My own little Bear seems to be adjusting well. Yesterday, she protested when I picked up her sandy, sticky body to go home, the once-docile Bunny now ferocious in her opinion. For now, the mama Bear is bigger and has the car keys, so we went home.