Edward Hosts a Play Date

Yesterday after school, Edward’s best friend came over for a playdate.  This is a bit of a milestone, as Edward has previously never had a best friend and has never really invited someone over before that he wasn’t forced to/related to.  In the interests of anonymity I will call this friend “Larry.”  And let me just say that Larry was very excited to come over.

Now, I felt that I should be doing some quality hosting, with fun activities and the like, but what Larry really wanted to do was watch Phineas & Ferb.  And who could blame him?!  So we put on an episode, and they enjoyed this for about ten minutes before running upstairs so that Edward could show Larry all of his toys.  Luckily, every toy that Edward owns had previously been spread out all over his bedroom floor, so it was quite easy to show them off.

The two boys amused themselves by hanging off of Ruby’s loft bed by their arms and then falling on the ground, which seemed very safe.  They also decided to put CDs into the CD player and play half of a song before switching to a new CD.  They did this four thousand times.  It was somewhere around then that they decided they needed a snack.  Edward offered Larry a yogurt, which he declined, but Edward was not going to let that stand.

Edward: “Hey, you wanna yogurt?”
Larry: “No.”
Edward: “You wanna yogurt?”
Larry: “No.”
Edward: “I will get you a yogurt.”
Larry: “No.”
Edward: “Okay, here’s a yogurt for you.”
Larry: “Okay.”  *eats yogurt*

This is a brilliant tactic for getting people to eat things, and I will employ it the next time Edward refuses his dinner.  Once the snacks were eaten, Edward opened a bag of mini peanut butter cups and decided that he and Larry should have more snacks.  I think I caught them early.  I only found three wrappers.  Unless they ate some wrappers.

Larry had been expressing some interest in drawing a picture, so I offered to get out some crayons and paper, but Edward rejected this idea and informed me that they would be playing with Play-Do instead.  I started to explain to Edward that he needed to let his guest choose some things too, but was cut off by Larry, who agreed that Play-Do was superior to coloring, and so we got out the makings of a big mess.

While they were shaping and squishing, Larry told Edward the funniest joke that either of them had ever heard.  It went like this:

Larry: “Knock knock.”
Edward: “Who’s there?”
Larry: “Banana.”
Edward: “Banana who?”
Larry: “Banana scrape.”

At this point the two of them burst out in wild guffaws and could not be contained.  Humor is universal it seems.  It’s a good thing that Ruby taught Edward about knock-knock jokes.

When Larry’s mother came to pick him up the boys were upstairs playing again and refusing to come down.  It then took 10-15 minutes to get Larry’s coat on and out the door, which is always the sign of a good playdate.  When nobody wants it to end you know you have done well.  And of course there is the other sure sign of a successful playdate.  Larry is coming back over tomorrow.  And when he does, I will make sure that the day is full of coloring and not eating yogurt.  Also, don’t tell Ruby they were in her bed.