Wednesday, April 29, 2009

On another topic

My friend Beth and I have been laughing a lot about all of my adventures in trying to make some local Mom friends. I feel like I'm dating again. And I haven't been dating for a long time. Anthony and I have been together since we were 20. College takes a lot of the charm and finesse out of dating.

Don't get me wrong. I have a great group of friends that I've had for a long time and I'm lucky enough to see them a lot. But already with every ones kids it is hard to find a day when we can hang out and none of our kids are over 3 yet.

I thought it would be nice to make some friends with some local Moms. I also thought it would be good for Oliver to have some more kids to play with. Everyone kept telling me it would be easy to make friends now that I had Oliver. But I hadn't had to make new friends for a long time. College was fairly easy. You are living with all these new people. In law school it was kind of easy because everyone is starting new and doesn't know anyone. At the DA's office everyone is hired in a big class so again everyone is starting all over together. Plus the DA's office had the added benefit of bonding over the craziness of what we were now doing. My point of reference for making new friends is high school. That was a long time ago, but oddly/sadly enough there are a lot of parallels to high school.

I'm curious about other peoples experiences and thoughts about this.

I have a lot more to say on this one, but for now I'll leave it at that. I'm meeting my good and old (not in age way) friends Kim and Kelly today.

3 comments:

Julie and Dean said...

I can relate to the difficulty of meeting other moms. We move frequently for my job so just when we are starting to make friends we get asked to move. Which is fine but it's always so difficult to start up again.
Now that we are in TN (I'm originally from NJ and Dean is from RI) we have tried to start an international adoption play group. And I mean tried hard. We got some "hits" but they fizzled. THEN, we started meeting a lot of other moms in the park but I swear they discriminate against working moms bec all of the play groups are like M through F at 10:00am. What the??? Am I the only working mom in TN or what?
There are some other TN related issues for us too but one thing I have learned from moving so much is that making friends that are the right fit does happen, it just takes a lot of time. Our friends that we met in OR, probably 6 mos before we moved, have become some of my very favorite. I'm not much help but you are definitely not alone if that helps any.
_____
Oliver looks adorable in the pictures. He looks like such a litte toddler now.

Claremont First Ward said...

I swear it's regional. I've lived in the Northeast, the southwest, and northwest. It was SO easy to make friends in Oregon. Here in CA, forget it. Unless you are ready to make the effort every single time, you can forget making friends.....luckily for me, I have lots of family here and I'm pretty busy with my kids so I don't feel like I'm missing out. Good luck. :)

Christine @ 12,450miles said...

OK, I totally hear you here. Not so sure where to start. I have my friends from the 'hood... but I feel like I need to make a few others from "outside" the mile radius. I'm starting with story time and taking it from there. I'm hoping it works.

That said, I'm also not in the same geographical region as you and I know you'll have it tougher. Wishing you luck!