Friends and neighbors

We have neighbors. Boy, do we have neighbors. The street is crawling with kids of all ages. But our most significant neighbors are the ones directly across the street from us who have two kids, ages 4 and 7. I've actually known the mom and kids somewhat distantly for a while, but we haven't seen them much in our regular circuit because the kids go to a private school. But that hasn't stopped Luke and the older boy Alex from being Instant Best Friends. Here is how the conversation went the first time they met:

Luke: "I just wanted to know...Do you like Legos?"
Alex: "Yeah."
Luke: "Do you have any Alien Conquest?"
Alex: "No, but I really want some. I was just looking at them on the computer." [Editor's note: Total. Luke. Clone.]
Luke: "Well, I was wondering... I just got the new Alien Conquest, the big one, and I wanted to know if you want to come over and build it with me?"

After a week of friendly greetings every morning (when they see us leaving, they stick their heads out the window to say hi), Alex and his sister Ella came over on Sunday with a big bag of homemade "welcome to the neighborhood" cookies. The boys built Legos all morning and they acted like long-lost friends: they independently worked out a system for how they were going to take turns with each of the building steps so that they would get an equal amount of turns to make stuff.

Yesterday they continued building a little more until Alex had to leave. But when he saw Luke leaving the house at around dinnertime, Alex stuck his head out the window and called,"Luke, how is the Lego going?" "Not too good," reported Luke glumly. Then, later, when he got it figured out, Luke stuck his head out the door to report to Alex, "Hey, I fixed the Lego! It's awesome!"

It's like having soup cans attached by a string, except we don't even need the soup cans.

We could be imagining things, but Dave and I both agree that Luke and Zach seem to be getting along with each other much better in the new house as well. There's a long center hall that they love to run down. Plus there's a massive shower stall in their bathroom that is just too much fun for only one kid to take a shower at a time. And the gymnastics mat in the garage seems to be just big enough to contain a 7-year-old's kata and a 4-year-old's somersaults.

On Monday at Author's Night at our downtown bookstore, Luke had a chance to read from a book he has been working on for most of this semester. It's an extremely detailed book with heavy Harry Potter themes. He had been very nervous about reading it in front of all of the parents, but he managed to conquer his nervousness and he did an amazing job reading to everyone.

Afterwards they announced that they were serving cookies in the courtyard, and there was a massive kid stampede out to the cookie table. Zach wasn't quite quick enough or bold enough to muscle through the crowd, so I held him on my lap and told him we would just wait to get a cookie. But seconds later...Luke emerged from the crowd holding two enormous cookies, and presented them to Zach: "I got one for me and one for you - You can pick which one you want."

What mature alien has invaded Luke's body?

Last, since we're on the topic of Luke - Last night I had the opportunity to bring Luke and his friend Eitan to a special cookie party-slash-movie premiere of "Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer" in Hollywood. The premiere was swarming with kids of all ages, but somehow all of the seven-year-old boys managed to find each other. Luke wound up becoming instant friends with this kid named Sawyer, and they sat next to each other and giggled throughout the movie, and we all went out to dinner with each other afterwards. Now Luke and Sawyer are begging for a playdate, which is insane, because even though Sawyer's family technically lives in the L.A. area, they are 50 miles away from us. I'm just putting it out there as one thing that amazes me about Luke - He can make friends with anyone, anywhere. I mean, who makes a friend at a movie? And more importantly, do I really need to set up a 50-mile playdate when I could just...take him across the street?