making friends

Geekydaddy and I are both social animals. In fact there was a time when we could have been described as party animals. We like to be surrounded by people, and have both always been part of a strong, close knit group of friends. In fact I thought long and hard before introducing Geekydaddy to my circle when we first were dating. Bringing a date into "the gang" meant that he was being seriously considered as a potential mate.

Since kids we have struggled to find time to hang out with our friends. Babysitting being expensive, and our time with the kids rather limited, we are not free to go out to meet our single or child free friends in bars and nightspots, and we never got into the habit of going out seperately on "boys nights" or "girls nights", outings are always with the whole gang. Throughout our lives we have always been open to forming new friendships, and indeed we did find some lovely new friends through Geekygirl. But recently we have been feeling a bit antisocial. Too tired to make new friends, too wrapped up in keeping up with the people we already know and care about. Then a mother from Geekboys daycare suggested we get together, and I found myself excited about potentially making a new mum friend.

Tonight we hosted geekyboys first 'playdate/dinner' with this friend from daycare. Now that our house is overrun with toys and their housewrecking owners, and the animals get groomed far less often than they ought to, so the floors tumble with hairballs, I am a little anxious about having new people over to the house. The new couch helps a little with my "do other people think we live in squalor?" fear, but still I was inspecting the tablemats for dog hair, picking up toys in a futile attempt to keep order as the children, delighted by "new toys" unearthed by my "display the more educational toys and hid the ones that came with the happy meals so as not to give the guests the wrong impression" rummage through the toy bins, thwarted my attempts to bring order to our home, and I was still swiffing under the table when the doorbell rang.

It turned out to be a lovely evening, I hope the first of many. I was surprised by how excited our little boy was to have a familiar friend come and visit, he was quite excited, running in circles and calling his name. The boys parents were easygoing and fun to talk to, drank wine (not a requirement for friendship, but something we have in common with most of our friends). They were quite happy for their son to join the activity that has become a post meal habit of our children at dinner parties, couch bouncing, and most importantly, were completely unphased and indeed amused, when our overly rambunctious dog and our son contributed a party trick designed to test out any new friendship.

After running laps of the lawn with various stolen items in her mouth, Geekydog must have eaten a bellyful of grass. I was watching our guest on the slide, when I turned to see Geekyboy dancing in his socks in a damp puddley spot on the patio. "Where did that water come from", i thought, realizing as that thought formed that what he was actually dancing so gleefully in was a puddle of grassy dog vomit.

Here's hoping that they still want to know us after this evening, because we really liked them!

How easy have you found it to make new friends since becoming parents?