A few weeks ago I posted on Facebook asking if any other mom friends in the area wanted to get together for a play date sometime. I got quite a few responses and it made me realize that I'm probably not the only mom who gets a little starved for adult connection. At first I ended up with something like 10 play dates booked all in a row and I was a little worried, but as things tend to go with children, about half of them had to be rescheduled because something came up with the kids (either mine or theirs). Now it has worked out to having two or three play dates every week and that has been perfect. It seems like any more than one outing per day makes for too chaotic of a day, so one every day or two has been really nice.
This week we went to the aquarium for one of our play dates and I decided to get a pass, so if anyone wants to go, let's do it! I wasn't sure how Peter would like it, I thought he might still be a little young to love it. He wasn't as interested as maybe a five year old would be, but he seemed to love running around and there were a couple of exhibits that he was fascinated by. I didn't have my camera out much but I snapped this cute picture of Peter and our play date buddy by Carolyn's stroller. They had both been walking beside of it hanging onto the side, and they stopped to hold her hand. It was too cute, her own mini bodyguards.
I've come to the conclusion that play dates are a lot like exercise. It's a lot of work to make it happen, and it's always hard to make it out the door (or tidy up the house for visitors), but I am ALWAYS glad we did it. It's been a treat for me and it's been really fun for the kids.
Whenever I was working or going to school, it created a built in network of connection with people who were at a similar place in life. That has been hard to find for me since staying home full time. Play dates have become my way of building a network of my own.
Peter and Carolyn are getting more and more able to play with each other too, and that has been fun to watch. Peter loves her, and is usually sweet with her (you know, when he's not smacking her on the head for touching his toys. We're working on it...). He loves to give her kisses, and she doesn't seem to mind much.
Today I caught them being narcissists simultaneously. You'll notice here that they are both enthralled by their own reflection in those toy mirrors. Peter kept asking for "Peter" all day, because he wanted to look at his reflection again. Funny boy.
Today was the first day this week that we didn't have plans to go anywhere, and I was looking forward to having a day at home with no running around. I didn't follow enough of
my own advice though, and I never changed out of sweatpants for the day, and I didn't get much done around the house. As I'm writing this I'm remembering those piles of laundry that I've been meaning to do every day for the last few days. Whoopsie.
Marty had to run around for most of the day today to meet with customers and such, and by the time he was home I was out of juice. Today was one of those run-out-of-gas-before-bedtime days. At one point, after I had rough time getting Carolyn down for a nap, I laid down on the floor in our living room on our giant teddy bear, pooped out. Peter came over and laid down on it behind me and started rubbing my back. I don't know where he learned that from, but it sure helped melt my almost-stoney heart.
Tonight I sat down to write this blog post and I was feeling pretty wasted. We'll call it a three on a scale of one to ten, one being completely miserable. As I started to type, the words just started flowing from there, and now I would say that my mood is about four notches higher than when I sat down. So thanks for anyone reading this, you give me a reason to sit down and boost my mood four whole notches at the end of the day.
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Labels: Motherhood
