Rhea and Annie....

It's funny after my last post in which I mentioned Rhea's ever evolving relationship with her friend Annie, I thought it quite timely when later that day I opened my inbox to the two pictures I am about to share.

I vividly remember when this first picture was taken just about two years ago, sitting on Mary's back deck enjoying the sunshine and marveling at how big the girls had gotten. Talking about how well they "played" together and how lucky we were to have each other. You can see my hand in the bottom right corner of the pool ready to quickly intervene in the case of toppling babies or the inevitable non-intentional, yet highly frustrating, toy grabbing from each other.


And this from last week:


I mean honestly. Would you look at these two...they just barely fit in the pool! Play dates these days are really chock full of action. Our girls have more fun together than you can imagine but they also scrap like sisters and sometimes will intentionally do things just to get a reaction out of the other (this behavior is fairly even on either side...I swear they trade off irritating each other). I actually heard myself telling one of them to "just ignore" what the other was doing the other day. A piece of advice I heard countless times from my own mother as a child. A piece of advice, I should mention, that I was NEVER able to take...so I'm not sure what I was hoping to accomplish. My guess is I was looking for some relief from the whining for my own ears. It made me laugh though as it just flowed right out of my mouth as natural as can be.

But for all their scrapping they are really sweet to each other as well. Rhea loves to recount stories of their time together (if you get the chance ask her about the time they took the bus home from the bakery). Randomly Rhea will ask to go to Annie's house or out of the blue declare "I love Annie". Though perhaps what sums up their friendship the best is when we are driving away from Annie's house after a fun filled day, Rhea will almost always exclaim "It is so nice to be with my friend!".