Here the house is clean, we are waiting for a play date to begin, Holly is quietly napping and soon her friends will arrive like a storm on the breeze.
First to arrive are Maya and Tristan, there mom's carpool all The time, the two of them are so cute, like little best friends.
Here is Holly's little fisher price farm, the rooster and chickens spin round and round when the hay silo is pressed down.
Next to arrive are Jennifer with her two little girls, Emma Rose and Isabella. One people started to arrive I woke Holly up, so she was a little disoriented for the first few minutes.
Next to arrive were little Tanner, he was the youngest to attend at about 11 months old, and Daniel, a new little boy to the group. He is only a few weeks younger then Holly.
His parents just moved here, only a few weeks ago from over seas. I forget where now. They live near San L
eandro and Mommy isn't driving yet so Daddy joined us.
Amarind the dad even ran out to get some snacks for the grown ups. Sun Chips, they were yummy. I had kid snacks set out on the table.
Emma Rose and
Isabella were big enough to climb up on the chair and get at them all by themselves, it is so cute seeing what Holly will be up to next.
Here is
Satine, also relatively new to our little group, she is also 16 months, and about 1 month younger then Holly. They just moved here from
France.
Here is David, he looks so grown up. A lot of the older boys have a tendency to run around crazy, but David was very well behaved, calm even.
Tanner, though a little guy ended up having loads of fun because he was able to crawl all around and he liked watching the other kids playing.
Here David and
Satine are playing with the music table, they really enjoyed it. The older girls are snacking away at the table.
Here is an overview of the room before it got really messy, but Mommy was smart and put away some of the toys before the other kids arrived, like the blocks and
legos.
Here
Emma Rose is playing with one of Holly's stuffed animals, he looks like an
Ewok. He is made from Alpaca fur, and Joel got it for me when he went to Ecuador years ago.
Its always a double edged sword when hosting a
play date. Part hosting and making sure everything and everyone is
ok, part watching Holly.
The balancing out talking with everyone and trying to enjoy myself too. Don;t get me wrong, it is totally a lot of fun, a blast, but its not as relaxing as going to someone
else's house.
In the center of this picture is Joshua and his mom Melissa, we hadn't seen them for a while so it was lovely that they could come and join us.
Here is little Sarah, I wanted her and
Isabel to come to the
play date because Isabel
isn't in my mom's group and I want her to join, so I wanted her to meet everyone.
I wanted to be sure to get pictures of everyone who attended, so here is a close up of
Satine, the little Rock Star and Maya eating a snack.
And of course little miss Chloe was in attendance. I think Holly really likes the idea of getting to show Chloe her house and sharing her toys, since she is at Chloe's so often.
It was really cool seeing the girls playing in the ball pit together. Chloe was a little scared of it at first, but since Holly was in with her, she was OK and had fun.
Slowly as time went on the room got more and more messy, here is another overview of the group. It was neat as there were several play areas, including Holly's bedroom.
This meant there were several conversation's going on at once. It was nice that everyone was getting to know each other and having fun playing.
I love this picture of
Satine, she is like the Queen of the room. This was before Holly started using her chair a lot. Now she sits in it all the time, which is really cool.
I love the little face Daniel is making here. Joshua loved the ball pit and he was tossing out the balls. Daniel and Chloe and Holly were helping to put them back in.
It was really funny seeing Joshua in the ball pit because his personality totally came out and he was
mischievous, normally he is very shy, especially around such a large group of kids.
Here is Chloe playing with a set of beads, like a little hula hoop or a very big belt, and Tristan riding around on the little car.
Eventually some people had to leave, Maya and Tristan were the first to go, but they did arrive first too.
Everyone waved bye bye and Holly, who isn't waving yet decided to walk her friends to the door which i thought was very sweet for her to see them out.
Here is little Madelyn, she was the last to arrive. We are friends from the book club, and she came over because we left some items at there house and I didn't have time to pick them up before leaving for the trip to NY.
We of course were happy to have them play, and since they arrived later in the day much of the chaos had ended and it was mainly just Sarah, Madelyn and Holly playing int he end.
It was nice to not have everyone arrive and leave at the exact same time, the staggered entry worked really well, and it allowed us to have friends over to play the entire afternoon. We hope to have another
play date at our place soon.
Its always a double edged sword when hosting a play date. Part hosting and making sure everything and everyone is ok, part watching Holly.
A few weeks ago we hosted a play date at our house. It was so much fun. There were 8 babies in attendance which was quite a large group but with the living room and Holly's bedroom it worked out great. When someone was getting a little overwhelmed or a little rambunctious there Mommy would take them into Holly's Room for some quiet play and all would be well.
Here is Tristan sitting in a ring of beads nibbling on one of Holly's toys. So cute. He is getting big so fast and starting to cruise around already. Except for Chloe and Tristan, Holly was the youngest in attendance and everyone was very mobile.
And here is our little host dumping out her toys. We had the cleaners scheduled to come the day before the play date which was really nice when your about to have such a large group over.
As you can see it took them no time at all to run like tornadoes through the House. Here is Joshua playing with a shaker and Holly is Playing with Isabella and Emma Rose in the back there.
The older girls were so well behaved and played really well with the younger babies. It was amazing how Holly was interacting with them, they were truly playing with each other and the older girls were even showing Holly how some of the more sophisticated toys work.
Here is Maya sitting in the eye of the storm. It actually isn't that bad yet, and Mommy learned from this play date. As the kids would hold up the buckets, shakers, beads, or eggs, there Mommies would open the container for them and out everything would go. A week later we had another playdate with even more babies and I learned to put the blocks, and Legos and such away, its not like there aren't plenty of other toys to be played with.
Here are Thatcher, Chloe, and Joshua happily playing. It was really nice that a lot of the babies knew each other. I think that made a big difference. maya looks so cute sitting in Holly's little chair.
Here are the two sisters, Isabella and Emily Rose, and there mom Jennifer. They actually just moved here from Washington DC less then 7 days ago. I am pretty amazed she was ready to bring the girls out for a play date so soon.
We really enjoy hosting, and while I joke about the hurricane, it actually isn't too hard to clean up the toys once all the little devils head home. Holly loves sharing her toys and flitting from person to person staying in the middle of all the action. 
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