things in common

On Monday I had my first play date with one of our neighbors. She had introduced herself a few weeks prior after driving past our house and seeing the boys playing in the yard. Our neighborhood doesn't have many young kids. Her  youngest just turned four so she was very excited to see kids, especially boys. We scheduled a play date at the park to get our boys together.
I will admit that it was a little bit awkward at the beginning. Jem was at school so I had Tru and Caia. She brought her boy and her new dog. The conversation was slow and there were long moments of silence. I've never been super at small talk and she seemed to be slightly reserved as well. Add in that play dates with small kids are always difficult since someone is typically running after someone or having to pause the conversation to referee and you can see how it wasn't the easiest morning.
But about halfway through our time, her boy just started wandering off towards the creek. She called him a few times while he just continued heading off. She excused herself to go get him. I started playing with Tru and just happened to look over in their direction in time to see him running as fast as his little legs would carry him with her sprinting to catch him. And in that moment I knew that even if we had nothing else in common, we both have little boys who do what they want and aren't great listeners.
Then shortly after that, I turned around to see that Truett had done this:

And I'm guessing that was when she realized that we also have in common little boys who do dangerous crazy things and make us look like terrible moms if we don't pay attention to them at every single moment of the day. Right now it's the only common ground that we have but it's enough. We both got a morning out of the house. We both had a chance to have adult conversation. Our kids ran a good chunk of their energy out. And we both realized that we aren't alone in dealing with all of this craziness. So I would say it was a successful play date.