Friend Making

Aidan, Lydia, and Elisa all make friends in different ways. Elisa is at the age where you can’t quite tell if she is going to be outgoing and crazy like her mom or reserved and crazy like her dad. With adults, she definitely has her pecking order. When Yang is around, and an adult tries to do take care of her in some way –  say push a stroller – she will adamantly call for Yang. If Yang doesn’t jump in, the voice gets loader and loader and then she begins to revolt by squiggling her body. If Yang is not around, then Cui Ayi gets the call, followed by dozens of others and then eventually her father. With kids, Elisa of course has Aidan and Lydia and they can be found playing together on what feels and sounds like a constant basis. Aidan in particular is good at taking care and entertaining his younger sister. As far as kids her own age, Elisa does not lack for friends, however she has one main friend Weili. Last week, I stayed home from work a couple of mornings in order to watch the Giant’s playoff games. Which means I got to observe the household pattern in the morning. It went like this – Yang left for tennis, xiao ayi arrived at 9:15am and starting cleaning. Elisa went to the down stairs playground to play with cui ayi. An hour later Elisa returned with Weili and Weili’s ayi. Weili greats me with “aisha baba, aisha baba”. ”Weili’s ayi watched Weili ayi while the two ayis I employee cooked lunch and continued to clean the apartment.

Here’s a picture of Weili and Elisa from a couple of months back when they were going through the drinking together phase. Reminds me I need to take more pictures of them.

Lydia needs to be with friends and makes friends pretty easily. If we go somewhere she will often find another little girl or older girl to talk with. She’s been doing this in fact since she was Elisa’s age. I first noticed it on a trip we made to up river from Guilin to Yangshuo a few years ago. There was an older girl on the river boat and Lydia wanted to and eventually did make friends. She still does this when we go places, last month we went to a spa outside Beijing and she made friends with this little girl

and our trip to Alaska during a train ride she make friends with this little girl

Around home she has a super good friend she commutes to school with, Emily and who on weekends Lydia is often chasing Emily to go play with her. Lydia also holds court with other girls in our complex and leads them on various expeditions. One of her favorites recently is to go into starbucks, ask for a free glass of water for each member of the troop, drop a packet of sugar in it, then drink it from a straw. Lydia is of course very close to Aidan, two pics from our Alaska trip help illustrate.

Aidan meets is friends in a more structured way than Lydia and Aidan is more comfortable entertaining himself. When Aidan is playing soccer like he was this morning, he is able to jump in and be one of the boys. At school he has a good friend Timmy and they exchange information about computing gaming. On weekends, we will often see Aidan playing with his siblings but not like Lydia were he needs to go meet friends to be happy.