When I got home from work yesterday, there was a largish rabbit sitting in my front yard.

I'm positive it was the Easter Bunny, scouting out good hiding places for eggs.

Penny wanted to play outside yesterday after dinner, so Matt took her out. Eventually, she worked her way around from the deck to the front of the house, and discovered the cluster of kids playing a couple of houses down from us.

In the past, she's avoided socializing with most of the neighborhood kids, but the yard they were playing in front of is the one with the little toy police car that Penny's fallen in love with, so she trucked over there to play with the car.

The little girl who lives at the end of the street is Emma. Emma is only a few months younger than Penny. They've been introduced a few times, and Emma came right over and tried to play with Penny. She was steadily rebuffed.

Eventually, Emma gave up and went to play with Pete, who is even closer to her age. (When Pete was born in late November, and Emma in mid-December, I thought how wonderful it was, that Penny would have kids her own age to play with! Little did I know she would actively resist all attempts at socialization.)

And then Emma's grandmother said, "Emma, why don't you show Petey your animals?" and Emma obligingly trotted over to their porch to collect a couple of plastic animals. Yard-decoration sorts of things that Emma had apparently appropriated as toys.

The collection included squirrels. And ducks. Suddenly, Penny was interested.

Suddenly, she was playing with Emma and Pete. She showed off her duck quack-and-waddle for everyone. She let Emma hug her. She helped Pete organize a little town-hall meeting of all the animals.

She was most wroth when Matt and I told her it was time to go inside, and came quietly only after many promises that she could play with Pete and Emma again soon. Even after she got into her pyjamas, she was asking where Emma was, and was a little irritable when we told her that Emma had gone inside, too.

There are things I really don't like about our house. Creaky floors, insufficient space, the back yard that slopes steeply into a ditch, stained carpets, shoddy construction... I think I ruined our tree when I pruned it last fall, because only the bottom north quarter of it has leaves this spring.

But the neighborhood, now... The neighborhood is shaping up to be pretty cool.

After adamantly refusing to wear sandals all last summer, Penny has finally cued in on one very important thing: If she wears sandals, we won't make her wear socks.

I think it registered last night, when we put sandals on her rather than do the whole sock-and-shoe routine to go out and play.

This morning, it was all about the dickering. She asked for socks rather than tights. And then she asked to be left barefoot until time for school. And then, when the moment came, she decided she'd rather wear sandals than socks and shoes.

I don't mind. We bought these sandals for her last year, and she wore them exactly twice. I almost tossed them in the bag of stuff for Goodwill a few weeks ago. I'm not sure why I didn't, but I'm glad now. They look really cute on her.

--Liz