Apr 12 2013
By Adina Kay-Gross at 2:13 pm
The weather is warming up and here’s a piece of advice for anyone thinking of moving to the suburbs: do it when the weather is nice.
Through the long winter months, I thought a lot about how living in the city forces you to be a part of the community in a way that the suburbs do not. Back in Brooklyn, I could easily spend a day alone with the kids but not feel lonely for adult company, because wherever I went, I was surrounded by people. If I sat on a bench with the girls at the park, other parents and their kids were inevitably doing the same at an adjacent bench and suddenly we had our own adult version of parallel play without meaning to. Lack of space indoors meant people were pushed out of doors, even in inclement weather. Read the rest of this entry →
Dec 4 2012
By Amy Deutsch at 9:54 am
When reading all of the advice posts to our editor Debbie about life with two kids last week, I started thinking about what I’d said to her the last time we saw each other. My son was 4 months old, my daughter was 3 years and 3 months. Debbie was about 8 months pregnant with #2. And she asked me how it was to adjust to two.
Without even thinking about it, I lied.
I blithely said, “Oh, it’s not so bad!” instead of telling her about how this baby would get so hysterical around 11 p.m. that he wouldn’t soothe for anything so I would spend hours upon hours walking and rocking him… which still didn’t work. Almost nightly, I felt so desperate that I’d put him down, walk away, and cry because I was so exhausted I couldn’t see straight. Read the rest of this entry →
Aug 10 2012
By Alina Adams at 10:53 am
My calendar is filling up.
In my piece on being a latch-key kid, I suggested that perhaps spending hours upon hours alone as a child, watching TV and ruling my elaborate, closet paper doll kingdom with an iron fist may have contributed to the slightly anti-social–alright, downright misanthropic–aspect of my adult character.
Fortunately, the story had a happy ending. I met a fellow TV watching misanthrope, and we lived happily ever after. (Or at least, 15 years and counting.)
Though we weren’t alone for long. Soon, we had a bouncing, baby misanthrope of our own. Like Mom and Dad, my oldest son could sit for hours, drawing, looking at books, living in his own head. At the playground, he’d sway dreamily on a swing, or repeatedly meander down the slide, as if the other children weren’t even there. In school, he made one close friend, and he was perfectly happy with that, even though every single conference we went to, his teachers urged us to urge him to expand his social horizons. (Which would have been a true case of “Do as I say, not as I do.”) Read the rest of this entry →
Jul 24 2012
By Dawn Siff at 4:12 pm
Get thee to a coffeeshop.
“I wish there were a Hallmark card to say, ‘I’m sorry I flashed you.’ ”
That’s all my email said. I knew they would get it. I had just come from another Friday afternoon gathering of my neighborhood “mom friends.” The conversation turned to C-sections, a few women complaining their own scars were botched. I wanted to know how mine compared. “Nope, yours looks good.” I was embarrassed right after I did it, because no one else, uh, “shared,” but they didn’t seem to really care or mind.
I never thought I would make such close friends at this point in my life. I am in my late 30′s and I had a baby a year and a half ago. Read the rest of this entry →
Jul 23 2012
By Elana Gartner at 2:45 pm
The scene.
They tell you about the exhaustion, the hours of feeding, the diapers, and the cuddles. They don’t tell you about the revolving door your social life is about to become.
Parent Dating Phase #1: The Pregnancy Pick-Up
In the last month of my pregnancy with my son, I met three other women who were also eight months pregnant and lived in the same neighborhood. They were my early foothold into parent friendships. We cheered each other on when the boys (yes, all boys) were born, immediately started comparing notes on problems the kids were having, and had a few “playdates,” whatever that meant in the first year of their lives. One of them introduced me to a listserv of moms having children in the same month. October is a busy birthday party month for us now. Read the rest of this entry →
May 11 2012
By Carla Naumburg at 2:37 pm
Mother’s Day is on Sunday, and in addition to honoring and thanking the mother figures in my life, I also want to thank my fellow Mommy friends. On my first Mother’s Day in 2008, my older daughter pulled over a cup of hot coffee and sustained burns up and down her left leg. This is a post I wrote to a friend after that happened.
Dear Friend,
Thank you. I was having a terrible week (a week when even a little retail therapy didn’t help) and I called you and blurted out my craziness, my worries, my fears (so much for focusing on the present, I guess) and without a pause or hesitation, you invited me over. We sat at your kitchen table, eating our sandwiches, and I told you about the burn (even though I’d already told you the story two? three? times before). Read the rest of this entry →
Aug 30 2011
By Carla Naumburg at 1:15 pm
One of my closest friends has moved away, and at the risk of sounding dramatic, I am heartbroken. You see, she wasn’t just a friend. She was a Mommy Friend. Those of you who have struggled to keep old friends and make new ones through the transition to parenthood can probably relate to just how sad I am to see her go.
We met at one of those inane Mommy and Me classes that would have been a weekly torture session had I not found a friend. We started out with a few tentative play dates—would our kids (then about 9 months old) get along? Would we have anything to talk about? Is it possible we might actually like each other?
It was all of the above, and more. Not only did our children take an instant liking to each other, but she and I became incredibly close over the next couple of years. All of the moving parts that have to fit into place for Mommy friendships to work actually did. Our schedules matched, our parenting styles were remarkably similar, and our children had a great time together, and soon came to prefer each other to almost anyone else. Best of all, she and I became great friends. We actually found points of connection beyond our kids—we talked about our families and friends, the transition to motherhood, and questions about our career paths.
Read the rest of this entry →
