Last week, Kaia got to be in the company of Chris’s cousin, her husband, and their baby for three days at dinner time. This week, she had Chris’s friend unexpectedly visit and have dinner with us on Tuesday. Then yesterday, our friend came over to see and play with her before she and I went out to dinner together. So, she’s been quite used to having company over. And Kaia being Kaia, she loves being around people and being social in her very toddler-esque ways. So when we came home today, she asked if “friends” would come over. I told her that tonight, we’d have no one coming over, that it would just be the three of us before we got ready for bed and got on a plane to go to San Francisco tomorrow. She gave me a very glum face and said, “I want friends to come,” and then demanded that my friend’s husband come visit (the friend who came yesterday).

I love watching Kaia interact with our friends and family. I love seeing her build bonds and attachments to them. And I also love seeing how she connects partners to partners and siblings to each other. This is my sweet Kaia Pookie making sense of the socially connected world we live in.