A family moved into the townhouse next to ours. Previously, a nice hispanic family lived there - however, I had two complaints about them: 1) they played their music way too loud at all hours of the day/night and 2) it was like Cinco de Mayo every weekend with their huge family gatherings.

Anyway, the new family consists of two parents and four children. The two older boys are 8 and 7 years old and then there’s a 2 year old girl and a 7 month old boy. What’s great is that the two older boys, whom I shall call J8 and J7 (both of their names start with J so I’ll identify them by their initial and age), come over to get Jesse to play with them. At first I thought it was odd that they would want to play with a 2 year old, but they’re really more interested in his wagon and soccer ball and various other toys that make it to the outdoors.

The pluses to this are that he has friends to play with and it’s helping his verbal skills. I noticed almost right away that his sentences were becoming longer and more intelligible. And he gets excited to go play with them, although usually he’s just running around while they play with his stuff. He seems happy enough with that at this point though.

The big minus that I saw last night while I was out on the deck watching them is that he follows the leader. J8 was climbing up to our deck on the outside of the banister. Jesse immediately started to climb up that way, too, until I put the kibosh on that. J8 then decided to leap up to the landing, climbing like a monkey over the rail. Jesse, of course, is way too short to be able to do that, but he was standing there trying to figure out how to do it.

In any case, we like our new neighbors and their kids and I have a feeling that we’ll be getting to know them all much better as the summer progresses and our boys play together.

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1. I don’t know any of my neighbors. The last Caucasian neighbors I had (Kelley and her mom) moved out last week. I’m the only owner left in the building.

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  06/08/09  at  01:39 PM

2. Wow. The only owner? That’s amazing.

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  06/08/09  at  03:04 PM

3. Will he play with the 2-year old girl?  That might be a little safer.

   And it’s funny you mention this helping Jesse’s language skills because the first thought through my mind was, watch out for new (undesireable) words he might pick up from 7/8 year-olds.  Some (my own kids) call me paranoid.

   Posted by Gwynne  on  06/08/09  at  07:04 PM

4. Yeah, I thought of what Gwynne said.  7/8 year olds can be a bit rough ~ I’d say make sure there is constant adult supervision.

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  06/08/09  at  07:37 PM

5. I haven’t seen the little girl leave their deck yet. And what’s interesting about her is that she makes Jesse seem much older - more like a full 3 year old - because she’s very much smaller and her verbal skills aren’t quite up to his.

   The boys seems like good kids, if a bit rough. I was happy to hear their dad remind them that Jesse is smaller and to not be so rough with him. So far Kevin has been out there with them when he’s playing with them.

   There’s also a little girl in a house across the way who has come out to play with them. She may be 4 or 5 years old.

   I will say that I enjoy hearing their screams and yelling and laughter out there - sounds like summer should sound.

   Posted by jen  on  06/09/09  at  11:34 AM

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