Addie's Best Friend

By this time in Ellie's life we had fully established relationships with her best friend, Brynn, and Brynn's parents. We cultivated their friendship so much that they identified themselves as being the other's best friend. There were two Brynns in the classroom and when I asked one child how they differentiate between the two, her response was "There's Plain Brynn and there is Ellie's Brynn."

Sadly the same can not be said about our attempts to connect with Addie's friends. Life just seems more hectic these days and it seems as though we don't have time to squeeze in any more relationships into our daily routine. I feel a bit bad about this, as it's another example of how the girls are DIFFERENT even if we try to treat them equally.

However, even without our help Addie has a very distinct best friend at school. Her name is Bella. Addie talks about her all the time and so when we told her that she could invite ONE friend to Ellie's party, there was no doubt in her mind who she wanted to come. Bella. It was a lot of fun to see the two girls playing together as that's not something we've really focused on in Addie's life. It's apparent, though, that the connection is there even if we don't do anything extracuricular to encourage it. Addie loves Bella and Bella loves Addie.

It will be interesting to see how their friendship grows. A close second to Bella being Addie's favorite is Gabby. I'm told that the three of them are insparable at school. I wonder if they'll define themselves as a unit as much as Ellie and Brynn did. I wonder if their bond will be as strong in spite of us not spending as much time with Bella as we have with Brynn. I wonder if it will be easier for these girls to handle the tensions that are bound to arise in the next couple of years as they continue to develop their social skills. Ellie went through some difficult times with Brynn, but still managed to come out of them with their bond still strong. Are the same sort of struggles in store for Addie and Bella? I suppose only time will tell.