Breakthrough

Deuce is three months old now, which means that he is finally starting to act like a person, as opposed to the howling animal he's been mimicing for so many weeks. And along with his acquirement of people skills like smiling, laughing, making eye contact, and using his voice in a conversational manner, he's also acquired a new friend...

Dink was watching Sesame Steet the other day, and the segment was about friends. Now, the dink knows all about being "nice to your friends," a lesson that's apparently repeated daily at "school" (daycare). And I've been told for months that he is attached at the hip to a little troublemaker named Rylan in his class who frequently gets put in timeout (of course my dink never has to go to timeout, but he's definitely developed a healthy fear of it from watching his friends suffer). On Sunday nights, when I'm telling the dink that the next day is a school day, he tells me "go see your friends," and Rylan is usually at the top of the list of friends he'll see. (Randomly, though, it's a little girl named Gia that shows up among our list of family that we "God Bless..." in our prayers.) Anyway, after watching Sesame Street, I quizzed Declan on the friend situation. The conversation went like this:

ME: Who was Big Bird's best friend?

DINK: Teddy bear.

ME: Who was Ernie's best friend?

DINK: Bert.

ME: Who is your best friend? (I was anticipating Rylan. Instead I got the sweetest surprise...)

DINK: Baby Keane.

So both Dink and Deuce, and the whole Womack family scored big on that one. Deuce finally gained acceptance, and a friend that he'll treasure for life. Dink melted Mommy's heart with his sweetness and sincerity. And the Womack family unit as a whole breathed a sigh of relief that maybe it won't crumble after all from a permanent rift in its infrastructure.