FAIL

It's not my intention to let this blog languish for weeks at a time. I was talking to Lora the other day (it was more than 2 weeks ago but in the freaky fastforward wormhole that sucked me in the day Bo was born, that was like yesterday) about how this blog sucks. Her response was that it doesn't so much suck as it's just nonexistent. So true. It's not that I don't have anything to talk about or think about or work through. I just sort of suck at life these days.

Speaking of sucking at life...

You know that expression we like to use about how people should be required to obtain a license to have kids? I solemnly swear to never, ever say that again. Because if it were true and I passed the test in the first place (which is no guarantee. My stupid driving test took 3 tries. And I was 23 years old.), my license would have been revoked already, multiple times. Because I suck. I also promise to never again snark about the ridiculously unecessary warnings all over every baby item ever produced, as I am apparently their target audience. That audience being, of course, morons.

Last weekish, I was in the kitchen with the baby, trying to clean out the refrigerator. He was in the bumbo seat because he MUST! BE! UPRIGHT! at all times. In being upright though, he must be no more than 2 feet from my face. So I had him in the bumbo, in one of our kitchen chairs. The chairs are those high, bar stool style ones for sitting at a counter. Or a bar. They do have backs, they're not actual stools. Anyway, he was in one of those chairs and I had him pulled close to me, within (what I thought was)arm's reach. Except notsomuch.

In the minute it took to turn my head and shove something down the garbage disposal, that boy fidgeted and wriggled himself right off the edge of the chair, head first, onto the floor. Onto the ceramic tile kitchen floor. Head first.

Then I had to be the idiot mom at the pediatrician's office (at 8pm bless them) explaining that I had my baby rigged precariously and let him fall off of a chair. I could not believe I was actually uttering the words "I just turned around for a minute". GAH. I wanted to roll my eyes at myself.

He was fine. The doctor isn't sure he even hit his head at all.

It's becoming scarily clear though, that could be the first of many trips we'll be making to the doctor's office/emergency room with this boy. He spends most of his day launching himself head first at things he wants or at nothing in particular. When he's not trying to bash his skull, he's attempting to escape from whatever I've tried to use as confinement. He makes the exersaucer move across the floor with all his vigorous thrashing about, he's figured out how to use his foot as leverage to get out of the bumbo seat (that thing is so retired by the way), and more than once he's rolled clear out of our laps. I'm not saying it's ok to drop your baby, but I understand how it could happen.

Close Encounters of the Feline Kind

When I was little we had a crazy mutt of a dog. Some dog in the neighborhood had a litter (there were always litters of puppies and kittens in the neighborhood) and all it took to get my dad to agree to a dog was to put the tiny mewling thing on his chest as he sat in his recliner one night. Such a simple manipulation and the puppy was ours. My mom gave her the name Gypsy and it was a harbinger of the wild, incorrigible mutt she would turn out to be.

In hindsight, my parents probably had no business getting a dog at all. My mom was pregnant with baby number 6 or 7, I can't remember. Either way, it's pretty safe to assume that she and my dad were holding things together with both hands. The oldest of us was about 8 and the youngest was a toddler, Maybe about 14 months old.

Gypsy was a maniac. She ran all over the house, she chewed things, and she never stopped barking. I remember taking her for walks and she would drag me along behind her as she strained at the leash to go faster and farther. We could never let her off the leash because there was no guarantee she would ever come back. Now that I'm an adult (an adult who has seen many, many episodes of the Dog Whisperer), I realize that Gypsy needed way more exercise than she could get living in our little Southwest Philadelphia rowhouse. My mom didn't have the time or energy to devote to training Gypsy much past housebreaking and had to resort to simply letting her out in the backyard (we mercifully had a backyard) when the kids old enough to walk her were in school during the day.

And then one day, Gypsy was on a tear through the house and she ran right over the baby and scratched his face. He was fine (I'm pretty sure it was my brother) but I'm guessing that was when my mom reached her limit. One day I came home from school and it occurred to me that I hadn't seen Gypsy in a couple of days. I still remember my mom swallowing hard before telling me that she and my dad had sent Gypsy to live on a farm where she would have plenty of room to run and play.

Apparently people really give their kids that line, it's not just for television.


I should ask my mom what they really did with her.

********

We got Kitty a few months after we got married. He adopted us. Frank came home one night from work the bar and found him stretched out across the front step of our building. When Frank brought him upstairs, that cat immediately started purring and winding himself in and around my legs like he had known me for years. That was all he needed to do. He was our cat forever from that night, when he howled and scratched at the bedroom door until I let him in and he curled up on my pillow next to my head. We never could decide on a name for him and eventually he just started answering to Kitty.

We soon found out that this cat is um, psycho. He's incredibly needy, especially for a cat. He must always be in my face, on my lap, in my ear. He endlessly bashes his face into mine, which I know is a sign of deep affection but hi, so annoying. He licks the corners of my eyes and the tip of my nose when I'm sleeping. He does that kneading, pawing thing endlessly, especially when I'm sleeping. If he could find a way to crawl inside my face and live there, he would be the happiest cat ever.

Kitty also has aggression issues. He wants to be stroked and petted and scratched and then he doesn't. He makes his feelings clear by attacking the hand of whomever is showering him with love. He waits in corners and just on the other side of doorways to bat and scratch at the ankles of passersby. Our poor black lab outweighs Kitty by at least 50 lbs and even she avoids crossing the lunatic's path. We've gotten him toys for him to play with, thinking that the aggression is misplaced energy and boredom but no, just pure crazy. Even the vet - who is exclusively a cat vet - said he was the weirdest cat she'd ever met.

It's always been sort of a joke amongst our friends that our cat is the devil. Everyone knows to ignore him and they all try petting him at their own risk. We chalked every one of his quirks up to being lost on the streets for an unknown amount of time and gave him more love. He was just our misunderstood kitty that we loved no matter what.

Of course, we were quite worried how Kitty would react when the baby came. I didn't believe any of the old wives' tales/urban legends about the cat that smothered the baby, but Kitty's neediness comes with a side of extreme jealousy. I was worried about him climbing over the baby to get to my face. People say that cats instinctively stay away from babies and display gentleness with small children. While I'd never really seen Kitty interact with kids, I had no reason to think that he would suddenly find sanity upon the arrival of a smaller, weaker rival for my attention.

Clearly, I was right to be concerned



If he was allowed any closer to Bo's face, he would so be on it. Because that damn baby is in his spot.

Unfortunately, when we're not shooing Kitty away, we're ignoring him altogether. This has resulted in way more nighttime face diving since the baby is in bed and my arms/lap/face is free. As soon as Bo goes to bed for the night, Kitty climbs into my lap. As soon as I'm in bed for the night, Kitty is on my face or on my pillow, behind my head, both paws in my hair.

Things took a bad turn the other day when Bo - who is now all about grabbing at everything around him - took a few swipes at the cat. Kitty responded by batting Bo in the face. I was in the shower and I could hear the screaming through the closed bathroom door, shower running, radio on.

You may be surprised to learn that Kitty is still breathing.

There weren't any scratches. We don't think he used his claws. It was like a warning shot I guess.

So now what? We really don't know. It's unthinkable to me to take Kitty to the pound and essentially abandon him. There's a good chance he was abandoned once and that's how he ended up on our front step. On the other hand, I can't have a psycho cat attacking my baby.

************************

This all happened like 3 weeks ago, which is when I started this post. Apparently though I live in some kind of wormhole where time slips by without my knowledge.

Kitty is still with us, still desperate for attention and pushing the proximity envelope with Bo. Our solution for now is to not let Bo reach out for the cat and to do our best to keep the cat away from Bo. I'm sure we'll have to revisit once the boy is crawling.

Maybe I'll get the name of that farm from my mom.

And If You Got 10 Sticky Fingers...

Like most 4 month olds, Bo has discovered hands. He loves to watch my hands do things and he puts his hands on mine when I'm buckling him into his car seat or stroller, like he's helping. He doesn't really stare at his own hands so much as suck on them all day long. He tries to get both fists into his mouth at once sometimes. He'll also sit playing with his tongue and chewing on his fingers at the back of his mouth, where his molars will eventually be.

Anything else in the general vicinity of is face will end up in his mouth too. He's starting to figure out how to grab things and anything he manages to get into his hands goes straight to his mouth. He chews on my shoulder when we're walking around and he even got a handful of my hair in there today (because the hair is excellent for grabbing and holding onto, apparently. I really need a hair cut btw.). Bo will grab Frank's thumb and put it in his mouth and go to town. He'll even take a break, pulling Frank's thumb out and then putting it back in. He does it with the pacifier too.

Even though this is all normal developmental stuff, my baby is a genius. No baby has ever figured out how to put things in his mouth as efficiently and smartly as my boy. And the drool is just proof of his incredibly giant and brilliant brain. SHUT UP, he's a genius.

I'm a little concerned though, because he's sucking his thumb a lot. He's pretty much given up the pacifier in favor of the thumb. He'll actually spit the pacifier out so he can suck his thumb. Mostly I'm unconcerned. Except for a little bit. Because I don't want Bo to be a thumb sucker and he's already displaying some of the behaviors of one. He sucks for comfort when he's feeling upset or stressed, he sucks to get himself to sleep and to get back to sleep if he startles himself awake. I have visions of him being one of those 6 year olds you see at the mall, still in the stroller, sucking away. And well, ew.

I'm unconcerned because he's only 4 months old. This isn't a hard and fast habit he's developing here. Right? RIGHT? The other thing is, it's so damned cute. He gets that fat little thumb into his mouth and sucks like there's no tomorrow. Sometimes his enormous head falls forward into his lap because he's so intent on getting as much of the thumb into his mouth as possible, he can't expend the effort pick that melon up.

I'm trying to get some sort of schedule going with this boy (and oy, talk about sucking), part of which is getting him to sleep before 11pm, on his own, without nursing himself into unconsciousness. The trade off is the thumb. Am I setting myself up for a fight down the road? Is there going to be a pepper on the thumb showdown in our future? If I discourage the thumb in favor of the pacifier, isn't it really just the same thing?

No really, I'm asking you.




Because I'm a marshmallow when it comes to this boy.


Do you see those legs? Those legs are so FAT that they get stuck in the Bumbo. I pick the boy up and the seat comes with him.

17lbs.

SEVENTEEN POUNDS!


----------------------------------------------

two posts in two days. you have to be impressed. I'm just saying.

So Much To Haaaaate

Forgive me for the sputtering incoherence of this post.

Have you seen this train wreck?

Seriously.

I'm unfamiliar with the whole dating reality show genre. I've managed to avoid every season of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette purely out of disinterest. This show however, sucked me in by having the time slot directly following Hell's Kitchen. I love me some Gordon Ramsey.

This show annoyed me from the jump with all its damn commercials about "real women" looking for love. All the stats about the average size of the American woman versus the average size of the reality dating show contestant. I'm sorry, are the women on all of those other shows cartoon characters? Are they figments of our imagination? And come on, skinny women aren't really the biggest obstacles to reality on any of these shows.

Given the setup, I was fully expecting a whole, "big girls are beautiful, we're here and we're curvy sodealwithit" love fest. I was expecting a group of women confident in their own skin, having a great time, fighting for the affections of some dude. That would have been something.

Like I said, I'm unfamiliar with the genre. I wish I still were.

These women are so saaaad. And the show totally takes advantage of their self esteem issues and filters their entire life stories through the lens of being overweight. Rather than portray the contestants as confident in their bodies and comfortable with themselves, the show does everything to make it clear that "fat" and "pathetic" are basically synonymous. It almost seems as if the more they talk about their weight and body issues, the more screen time they get. It's even obvious during some of their narrative interviews that the producer sitting there is prompting them to circle everything back to weight. It became painfully clear after the first episode that these women hate themselves and every episode is going to pick at the open wound of their self-loathing. On top of that they've layered the promise of Mr. Wonderful and the happy ending of a marriage proposal. Because, you know, marriage totally makes everything easier and better. The wedding is the end of the story.

And they're so young. One woman is only 21 years old (!) and while she's the youngest, I would guess the average age is about 25 or 26. They're talking about how they've never experienced real love and that they've waited "their whole lives" for someone like Luke (Mr. Wonderful) to accept them for who they are and not what they weigh. Really? How is it possible that they think this show is going to be about anything other than their weight? When we first met these ladies, climbing out of their limos and walking up the red carpet to Mr. Wonderful, they were captioned with their name, age, height and weight. Who exactly is accepting them for the wonderful person they are on the inside?

Why are we even calling this a reality show? We all know there's nothing real going on here, right? Do these women know it? I'm just asking, since more than one of them claim to have never been on a date. Do they know that private jets to Vegas, horseback rides, gondolas with sparkly lights, dinners in rented out restaurants, and diamond effing promise rings are not standard dating procedure? Do they know that none of these excursions are Mr. Wonderful's idea? That he's a giant puppet (and I mean giant. Homeboy rings in at something like 6'5", 330lbs) being manipulated by the producers? They keep swooning over how no guy has ever been so romantic or imaginative and how thoughtful Luke is to come up with these wonderful experiences. While he seems like a nice enough guy, he's obviously not long out of the frat house. I'm guessing if left to his own devices, date night would be sucking down beers and wings at the local sports bar with all his buddies.

The last episode was all about Mr. Wonderful presenting them with dresses and taking them to the "prom". In the set up he talks about how he's sure most of these girls had negative experiences with their proms and probably didn't get to go and so he wants to make it up to them. And they're all so excited to go the prom because they never went to prom or their prom sucked or they went with a big group and without a date. And of course all of the bad prom experiences resulted directly from their weight issues but it's all better now because Luke's taking them to prom. Right. Because there's nothing creepy about waiting around to be told what you're going to be doing and then being told what to wear to that activity, when you find out what it is. And you're calling hanging out with some dude and 8 other women "a date".

There's so much that is wrong with this show. Reality television in general is a disaster but this is just awful. I wonder if these women knew what they were getting themselves into. I wonder if they're sitting at home watching this fuming that they're being portrayed as blubbering, needy messes. I sincerely hope that they're angry that every scene and episode shows them eating or making references to food. I mean, there are close up shots of them biting into some kind of beef on a stick and sometimes it's just a close up of the food. Like, let's see what the fat girl is eating. Alcohol doesn't seem as prevalent on this show as others but there seems to be food everywhere. This show is objectifying these women just as much as all the other shows do to thin women, despite the protestations to the contrary in the commercials.

I'm gonna keep watching though. I admit I'm hooked on the spectacular awfulness and even though I'm fully aware of how contrived and manipulated every situation is, even though I get that these women are being reduced to caricature, I'm interested to see what happens next.

I'm so weak.

Toys

Babies have a lot of stuff. Ok, my baby has a lot of stuff. Lots of stimulating, brain engaging, fun time toys that he only wants to play with if someone is right there, playing with him. And by someone I mean me.

We have a Bumbo sitter



We haaate to lay down. We must be sitting up at all times. But only if you're sitting next to me. Why are you up there and not down here, entertaining me?

We have a bouncy seat



Which isn't so much for bouncing as it is for spazzing out and talking to the animal friends dangling in front. But don't walk away please. And do NOT turn on that jerk vibration feature.



There's the play gym mat thing whose rightful name I do not know.



Which is not nearly as interesting as your upside down face behind me, Mommy.



And do not even think of putting me on my tummy, lady or I will cut you. Or at least cry.



This mat lives in the pack and play when not in use because the monster of a cat that lives here turned it into his personal kitty bed ten minutes after it hit the floor. And Bo hates the pack and play. Will not lay in it. If I put him down in it after he's fallen asleep, he immediately wakes up and starts screaming. So I use it to hold stuff, like blankets and extra clothes and the play mat thingy. I'm tidy.

We have rattles and stuffed animals and loveys. We have books and videos and a Sesame Street Subscription on YouTube. All of this is fantastic, fun stuff. As long as I'm right there, playing along. And if the game can take place in my lap, even better.



It's a pretty good gig.



*And yes those are green monkeys. They're pajamas people.

**You may notice nail polish on my thumb. It's only on my thumb. And half chipped off.

***What? I'm not letting myself go...

****The pacifier? I'm not worried about nipple confusion. This boy will suck on anything happily, including my shoulder and Frank's nose.

Because This Stuff is Hard

I've been wanting to write this post for months now. It's been banging around in my brain this whole time but the longer I've waited, the more perspective I've gained. There's a distinct possibility that my terminal smugness may have contributed to some of the issues I had with breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding is haaard. And at first I was very angry that, amidst all the literature and commercials and general beating over the head you endure while pregnant that breastfeeding is best, nobody wants to talk about how hard it is. And how it can really suck. I find the photos you see of a mom staring lovingly down at the child at her breast silly and misleading but also guilt inducing. Like I'm some kind of bad mother already because I don't enjoy the wonderful bonding experience of nursing my son. But now I realize some of the trouble I had could have been avoided if I would have taken a minute to climb down off of my stupid high horse and listen.

I paid very little attention to the information about breastfeeding that was available to me while I was pregnant. I took it for granted that this was something I wasn't going to have a problem with. There had to be some reason why I'd been carrying around a freakishly large rack my whole life. I didn't bother taking a breastfeeding class (then again I didn't take a childbirth class either. Not so much with the being prepared over here) and when I read about it I pretty much glossed over the war stories of cracked and bleeding nipples, engorgement, and incorrect latching or not latching at all. In my own defense, I did pay close attention to the descriptions and directions on how to get the baby to latch properly but reading about it and doing it are so not the same. And the baby? didn't read any directions.

Everything was fine in the hospital - before my milk came in. The baby was latching on just fine and while it wasn't a pleasant sensation, I wasn't losing any skin in the deal. The nurse gave me some lasinoh and I was religious about using it and everything was great. I was nursing every two hours exactly, waking the boy up to do so because of his jaundice and weight loss. My mom was visiting while I nursed and she said that I looked like a natural with the baby. That was some high praise from a lady who had 7 kids in 9 years and nursed us all and it only increased my bloated sense of self-satisfaction. There was a breastfeeding class on the postpartum floor the day after Bo was born and I turned my nose up at it with the attitude of "I'm too busy actually feeding my baby to bother with that." Also, "Sissies". I was also trying to prove that I was saner than my roommate who dragged the lactation consultant back to her bedside after the class was over.

Then day two of Bo's life dawned. He decided to wake up to the world around him and he was hungry! Clusterfeeding is not an adequate description of what ensued. He nursed nonstop for hours. He would fall asleep on the boob and wake up 30 minutes later ravenous again. We were leaving the hospital that day and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get him off long enough for the ride home. I asked the nurse for a pacifier just so he could suck on something. At some point that day my milk started to come in for real and that's when the fun started.

There are a lot of things that happen to your body after you have a baby that nobody really talks about, perhaps because it doesn't happen to everyone or it's different for everyone or it's one of those things that go fuzzy after time. There's an outside chance I just didn't pay attention to those bits of information in my research'. At any rate, up until the milk came in, I was going braless at night and it was totally fine. The engorgement started in the middle of the night, along with the worst night sweats I've ever experienced in my life. I woke up soaked, shaking and shivering. I had to change my pajamas it was so bad. The sweating made me have the chills too which left me sore and achy. On top of the soreness and ache of having just given birth. Awake during one of these bouts, I rolled over and wondered when someone put a ten pound weight on my chest. Oh wait, those are just my boobs! I had to get up in the middle of the night and fumble around for a bra because oh.my.god. My boobs had become rock hard and even bigger - which dear God, how is that even possible.

I don't know when exactly my nipples started bleeding but let's just say things went from bad to worse rather quickly. Bo couldn't latch on anymore. It was like trying to suck a softball. Or a honeydew. So he would cry and scream and get on there any way he could. Then I would cry, first from the frustration of not being able to feed my son and then from the extreme pain of his latch which I wouldn't break because the poor child finally got on there and was getting some food. Meanwhile, he's going to the doctor every day and his stupid bilirubin numbers kept climbing and the doctor is suggesting we supplement with formula until I establish my supply. Dude. I've got milk coming out of my ears. Supply isn't the problem here*.

After about 3 days of this - which felt like my whole life - I swallowed my stupid, stupid pride and called the lactation center that the doctor recommended. I was very leery of the lactation consultant after hearing stories of how mean and strict and fear inducing they can be. Thankfully, this was not to be my experience. That lady saved my sanity. She helped me with how to hold Bo in a football style so that I wasn't covering his entire face with my boob. She told me to get rid of the Boppy because it positioned Bo too high up and made the angle all wrong. She watched me try to nurse him and helped me with finger placement and all that stuff. Turns out I had interpreted the directions and diagrams wrong and was doing it wrong.

Shocking, right?

At this point I was so engorged that my fingers were leaving dents, dents behind and it was just too difficult for the baby to get his tiny mouth to latch on because it was too hard and smooth and he couldn't get any traction. That's when Collette, the lovely lactation angel, gave me the tool that saved everything. She said maybe we should try a nipple shield. And then there were rainbows and unicorns and a chorus in the background. The boy was able to latch on to that and suck away happily. It also sort of slowed down the flow so he could swallow without choking. As a bonus, it really did work as a shield, putting a barrier between his vigorous sucking and my poor torn up, bleeding nipples. They healed in about a week, around the same time we got into a rhythm of supply and demand and the softballs went away.

But I still am no fan. And I feel guilty about it and then I'm mad that I feel guilty about it. I know it's the best thing and what nature intended and blah blah blah. I'm doing it, ok? I'm sticking with it as long as I possibly can stand it. But I think a disservice is being done here in the effort to reverse the formula trend of the 70s and 80s and get women to breastfeed. It's irresponsible to say that breastfeeding doesn't hurt. It does hurt, especially in the beginning. As Collette said to me, we're talking about very sensitive erectile tissues being pulled and tugged and freaking chewed on all day long. That shit hurts. Even now that the baby and I are a well oiled machine and I can nurse him in the dark, it sometimes hurts. And that's with the nipple shield. He bites.

It makes me mad that the breastfeeding propaganda machine makes me feel like a bad mom for saying that it sucks. It makes me madder that there are girls out there who just can't do it and they're made to feel lazy or weak if they don't stick with it. Some people just can't do it and we need to recognize that and support those women. There are no medals or merit badges for breastfeeding. I grant that it's the best thing for baby and it's what nature intended and all that and it should at least be attempted. Sometimes nature fails though, and in the past when nature failed, babies used to die. We need to give each other a break. Being a new mom is stressful and hard enough without the added pressure of trying to make your body do something it's just not going to do.

There's nothing wrong with just wanting your body back, either. Nine months of pregnancy, childbirth (no matter what kind), and new motherhood beats the hell out of you even if you don't breastfeed. At some point you want to feel less like a milk machine and more like a person again. We should support that too. The whole business of pregnancy and parenthood is intensely personal. That needs to be respected and honored no matter what form it takes. As long as the baby is loved and cared for and safe and well fed, the rest of it is nobody's business.

And now I need a drink. All the shouting from up here has made me thirsty. Maybe my horse needs a drink too.

*Bo was back up to his birth weight - over it actually - by the time we went and got help. Supply was certainly not the issue. Stupid pride was.

Getting My Feet Wet

We joined a pool this summer - a swim club. No, not that swim club. We actually were careful to check that this pool didn't have such membership requirements before we joined. It would've been a deal breaker for us for sure. You have to be careful when you start joining organizations that designate themselves as "clubs" for that very reason. We narrowed our search down to two pools and picked the one that allows alcohol on the premises. Gotta have priorities.

The pool is lovely. It's leafy and cool, with lots of sunny spots and shady spots. It totally takes me back to the pool we used to go to when I was little. There's a snack bar and a baby pool and a deep pool with two diving boards, a one meter and a 3 meter board. When I was little the 3 meter board seemed skyscraper high. It was a terrifying thrill to jump off of it and a major accomplishment - worthy of screaming at my parents to watch me! - to dive off. It's funny to look at this board and think that it can't possibly be as high, the old board must've been way higher.

I haven't been off the dives yet. I haven't even been in the pool yet. Bo finds the pool extremely uninteresting and spends most of our days there sleeping, either on a blanket in the shade or in the stroller. Much like his attitude towards the bathtub, he doesn't really care for the pool. We got him in gradually up to his butt and that was ok but there was no splashing or laughing, just bewilderment and lots of squinting. Getting him any wetter resulted in lots of screaming. It's a process, I understand. So we sit in the shade and watch all the kids race back and forth from the pool to the playground to the snack bar.

And man, there are kids! And moms! There are lots of moms with babies right around Bo's age, maybe a month or two older. There's a mom I've seen there twice now with a baby that looks to be about 6 weeks old. I could maybe be friends with these women if I, you know, talked to them instead of silently appraising their strollers/post baby bodies/children's behavior. It might be nice to have some mom friends in the general area since I left all my friends way far away when we moved up here (this is Philadelphia, moving 30 minutes up the Schuylkill is like leaving the state). Someone who could come over for coffee and a fake play date that's really for us and not our kids.

But making friends is not my strong suit. It never has been. I'm weird and shy. Not painfully unable to function in society shy or freak you out when you talk to me weird. Just not the girl who's going to strike up a conversation with the person the next blanket over. It makes me seem snobby and standoffish but I'm really not. Just shy. And weird. It's like I'm the new girl at school and everybody already knows everybody. They all stand in the baby pool with the kids on their hips or in the water and they're chatting and gossiping and I just watch from my chair in the shade, unsure of how to get into the conversation. Or even what I would say.

But look! I'm a mom too! And my boy is cute. Wanna be my friend?