Had Our First Tears

Our neighbors have a "little sister" through a Big Brothers, Big Sisters type of program. Well, it started that way, but they've continued their relationship with her on an informal basis and she's part of the family now. They had her for part of the day yesterday and brought her over to play Barbies with Shaling. It was the first time Shaling had met Crissi, but not the first time she'd seen Crissi's Barbie toys.

Crissi keeps most of her Barbie toys at our neighbors' house for safekeeping. Shaling had been introduced to the toys by Morgan, our neighbors' college age daughter. We're not sure if Shaling perhaps thought that the toys belonged to Morgan and she wanted to go get Morgan to have her get her toys back or if she just REALLY wanted Morgan to come play too, but she would not sit down & play like we asked and instead put her coat on against our commands not to do so. She was adamant about going next door.

When she didn't get her way, she went up to her room. Brock went up to coax her downstairs to play, but she would have none of it and was quite defiant. He told her fine, then she could stay in her room by herself and he shut the door. After awhile, we still hadn't heard from her and I pondered whether she might be asleep. Brock went to check on her and she was trying to hide the fact that she was crying. He asked me to go in and console her, but she didn't really want to be consoled.

By this time, Preston & Crissi were in the basement playing on the Game Cube. Shaling worked her way downstairs to the computer and asked her dad to join her. She then watched a movie with us and by late evening, was full of giggles & laughter playing with her brother and her cousin Chase (Aunt Heather, Uncle Shane, McKenzie & Chase stopped by to meet her). So, she was over the episode quite quickly. In some ways, it was a sigh of relief to know that the kid was actually capable of crying since we hadn't seen any sign of it until this point.