For Sophie

Last week, we went to the park with a bunch of the little girls in Caleb's preschool class (including several that are on his list of girls that he loves and wants to marry). There were five girls there and then Caleb. Because he was so badly outnumbered, of course it goes to figure that at one point one of the little girls said to him, "no boys allowed." She got put on the bad list (aka Caleb was no longer going to marry her).

Then at church on Sunday (the 15th), when I went to pick him up from his Sunbeams class, he was extremely upset because the girls weren't being nice to him. We get into the car and he is nearly in tears. I ask him what is wrong and he says "nobody loves me."

"That's not true. I love you more than anything. Who doesn't love you?"

"Sophie."

Apparently she told him he was being bad, which he admitted he was, but by telling him so, I guess that meant she didn't love him. (At this point in the story, I should probably tell you that Sophie was also the one that got put on the bad list after the park day.)

So Caleb and I had a long talk on the way home from church about what he could do so that Sophie would love him. I told him he could say nice things to her, and then proceeded to give him a long list of examples. His favorite was that she was creative. We then moved on to actions he could do. First up was being nice to her and never hitting or hurting her in any way. Then as my first example on nice actions we can do, I suggested making her cookies. He got so excited at the idea. He loves to make cookies and thought this was the most brilliant thing I have ever suggested to him.

Once we were home from church, we got started on the cookies. I planned on making oatmeal raisin since we had the stuff for it and I figured if we were giving the cookies away that I might as well make a kind that Caleb won't eat. (He only eats chocolate chip cookies. And only if they're soft.) The recipe on the opposite page was for Giant Oatmeal Raisin Confetti cookies, with m&ms in them. Caleb pointed to the picture and said that's what he wanted to make for Sophie. So that's what we made.

While we were waiting for the cookies to bake, we sat down to draw Sophie a picture. He drew a picture of him and Sophie holding hands. Then he wrote his name on it, and I told him how to spell Sophie's name and he wrote it perfectly. Then he was going to write friends on it, but ran out of room so he used a little creative interpretation on where the letters go. Apparently I need to work on my pronunciation more though, because as I told him how to spell friends, he wrote "friembs."

Finally, we got to take the goodies over to Sophie. He was so super excited about it. Here he is with his picture, outside of Sophie's house:



And her cookies, which he then made me carry since they were so heavy (they were giant cookies after all):


We practiced what he was going to say to her as we drove over to her house. But once we were there, he was too shy and had me say it instead. Well, I whispered loudly to him the words but he didn't repeat them and she heard me anyway. Here's what he wanted to say to her, "I like that you are so creative and I hope you'll be my friend." Her dad, who had been the one to answer the door, then asked her if she wanted to be Caleb's friend and she shyly nodded yes. Caleb was so super excited that she said yes.

He had two playdates with her this week and they both went so well he didn't want to leave. I'm pretty sure she's back on the good list. And I am definitely in trouble when this kid gets old enough to actually like girls.