Noah is at the age now where he is starting to really care about other people.  He has always been a kind and gentle soul, but I have seen it develop and morph.  He has a “girlfriend”–I know he is totally too young but it is the absolute cutest thing in the world.  We were driving to school yesterday and I brought up love.  He said he didn’t love Sophie.  So we talked about love and how there are different kinds of love–even though our inadequate language only has one word for it.  I explained that there is the love you have for your family and that is the strongest and most important love and that most other love will not come close to rivaling the love one has for their family.  And Noah talked about how much he loved me, his dad and his sister.  And we talked about how much his grandparents loved him and his uncles, etc.

I then said we also come to love many of our friends, but that it’s a bit of a different kind of love.  But that when we love our friends we really look out for them and would be really really sad if something bad every happened to them and we would want to protect them.  He was so cute–he said “like one time when Sophie was hanging upside down on the climber and not holding on with any hands and it made me a little scared because she could fall.”  I said “yeah.”

“I love Sophie, mom.  She loves me too.”

They keep each other warm.  They hold hands at school and help each other get their coats on, etc.  The school has drawn the line at them being bathroom buddies.  They petition us for a sleep over.  They have been inseparable since the first day they met in Aug 2009.  The innocence of “love.”