In the morning we stand on our porches and watch the kids go to the bus stop. The “bus stop” is the end of our neighbor’s driveway so they don’t have far to walk. So while it does not require supervision it is supremely entertaining to watch Em and Kellan interact with one another in the morning. Somehow their behavior in the morning is a glimpse in to the secret life they have at school. By the time they get home in the afternoon and run around in the yard before the darkening sky indicates it is time to head in for dinner they are no longer kindergarteners, school children, it has all but worn off and they are just kids.
Yesterday morning as Em raced across the street Amy called from her front porch, “Em has a boyfriend.” My eyes (without my glasses yet, admittedly) went right from Amy to Emily. She continued on her path, darting across the street, but when Amy shouted the boy’s name, Em switched gears and suddenly instead of a six-year-old girl headed to the bus stop she was a linebacker, racing towards Kellan with all the strength her little 45 pound body can muster. There was some truth to this story evidently.
She came home from school and was playing in the yard with Kellan while MQD and I made dinner last night. “I want to ask Em about her boyfriend tonight, but we have to be cool, not push her and not laugh at her. I want to make sure she can talk to us, yanno?”
We concluded that we could of course laugh at her behind her back all we wanted, the grand prize of parenting. The laughter behind closed doors at your children’s expense. (In case you think your parents never laughed at you, call one of them right now and ask, I’d bet without hesitation they could recount a time when you did something completely absurd and you thought no one noticed at all. )
“I heard you have a boyfriend. Kellan says he is nice. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because he’s not my boyfriend.”
“Do you like him?”
“Yeah. But I don’t really really really really like him.”
I waas only slightly less stunned when I heard the words Emily and boyfriend in the same sentence. How I miss that fuzzy haired girl.
“Did he ask you to be his girlfriend?”
“Yup. I told him I had to think about it. And I think I’m gonna say no.”
Excitement on the side 
What a great dialogue :) “Really really like!”
I’m a little further along than you in the she’s-got-a-boyfriend game for parents.
All I can add is that being impressed by checked shirts doesn’t bode well for her bringing the cream of the crop.
What dad wears to work is maybe ok for whatever that job is, but this is your daughter.
If he’s almost out of single-digit years, he must have at least performed minor surgery (without harm to the patient) to be worthy of anything but your scorn.. :)
At least. :) I hope you are still around when Em gets older. I have a feeling it will get more difficult to navigate. And you will stand to prove to me that you did this THREE times over.
Oh gosh, it starts this early? NO! haha
It does. Good lord, it does. I suggest Heineken and cleaning the fridge. It helped me cope. Ha.