Don't ever "put yourself out there" unless you have to

My Dearest Sissy-roo,

Why is Evan doing this? I heard things get harder in year 3...but I feel like maybe he’s trying to “teach” you a valuable lesson on socio-cultural boundaries and autonomy. Okay, I’m kidding, he’s just being a brat. The cutesiest, adorable brat in the world, mind you. Can’t wait to kiss and squeeze that lil’guy. I’d offer you my usual standby threat I use on my friends and acquaintances: “You know I can put you in a 24 hour psychiatric hold right? I’ll just say you’re a suicidal addict and you’ll have to spend the night in a locked unit.” But alas, I don’t think little Evan would understand that and of course, if he did, he’d probably never forgive me for introducing that imagery. In fact, it’ll probably be one of those memories he’d somehow hold on to, and bring up awkwardly and casually when he’s like 19, hanging out with the family in my kitchen. It would go something like this:

E:“Hey Auntie, did you threaten to put me in a locked psychiatric unit when I was really young?”

S:“How can you expect me to remember those things?”

E:“Um, I still have nightmares from that...so, um...don’t you think I was kinda young?”

S:“Are you questioning me? In front of OTHERS? This is the kind of disrespect your mother warned me about 16 years ago!”

This conversation would inevitably force me to resort to insincere crying, pressuring Evan to console me...and be such a waste of his time, as to never bring it up again. the end.

In all seriousness, I think it’s just a little kid thing. All kids do it -including my precious Sofia. Sofia’s in a very interesting phase, where she now understands what being “nice” is, and is constantly reprimanding cartoons for not being nice. I think it all started over Caillou being mean to his younger sister Rosie, and Dean and I both saying that Caillou needs to be nicer to his sister. So now, as Sofia watches her favorite cartoon, I’ll catch her yelling at the top of her lungs, in a really mean voice, “Caillou BE NICE! BE NICE NOOOOOW!” It’s such an aggressive reprimand, that I have to come to his aid, and say, “he is nice, he’s being nice now, geeeez!” She’s also become super “helpful” especially with babies. Her thing is to bring out all her toys and give them to whatever child is around, only to become super jealous and immediately take the toy away. She offers a toy, only to take it back! Super embarrassing. Oh, and now trying to redirect her involves her yelling “STOP IT!” at the top of her lungs. How did the sweetest kid in the world start having 2 second melt-downs? 

Sofia’s also getting her two bottom molars in these last couple days which left us sleepless the last few nights. She was crying at 2:30am, and by that time was wide awake. We both tried, at 4 different times to hush her back to sleep, but with no avail. We brought her into our bed at like 3:30am, thinking she might, well you know, snuggle cutely and sleep. Of course, not only was she wanting to play, my eye-balls were sore from her pushing them in and saying “eyes. eyes. eyes. eyes. eyes.” She also restated 1000x a pretty traumatic event from earlier in the day, when she let go of her balloon and it flew up in the sky. Imagine at around 4:30am hearing, “booon, sky, bye-bye, Pia (Sofia) let go, booon, in sky, birds, airpane, byebye, blooon, booon, bye-bye, NOT NICE! NOT NICE! boon went bye-bye.”

Omg, I was so tired, and all I could dream about was that stupid balloon flying in the sky, flying free. I was so jealous of that balloon. The next day I was a complete zombie. Thankfully last night she slept soundly. Why can’t I be one of those people who sleep less than 5 hours a night and wake up refreshed? Dean and I both after being sleepless were questioning whether we wanted another child. We have become accustomed to sleep, not to mention, Sofia slept through the night since she was 6 weeks old...we are not built to wake up every 3 hours. So, I guess we’ll just hold off a little longer on introducing another baby. 

So as you know, it’s been quite the challenge for me to make Mommy-friends here in Philly. It seems like generally, most of the women I get along with, are ones who return to work. So I went on meetup.com to look for some mommy play-date groups to join and a few months ago joined one...only to un-join after 9 days. I don’t know if I’m too judgmental, but seriously, after joining I received 10 emails in the first 5 days, all of which were very sternly explaining their “rules and regulations” and very aggressively asking for a 5 dollar yearly fee. Within 3 days, the emails became even more aggressive, with updates to the “rules” and then, saying that if I didn’t attend a meeting within the first few days, I’d be ejected from the group. It just so happened that Sofia’s nap time was at the exact time all their group meetings were, so I contacted one of the group leaders and explained, and she seemed easy-going enough and understood why I couldn’t participate. The NEXT day, I get an angry email from the other group facilitator, telling me that I should just pay my fee online with a credit card, before I get kicked out! hahaa, omg, I have no idea what crazy cult-group I had stumbled upon, but seriously, it was craaaazy! So, I naturally discontinued my membership and explained to them that I was no longer interested and needed to be part of a more “flexible” mom’s group. So a few weeks ago, against my better judgement, and as a misguided attempt to “put myself out there” -pretty sure advice I got from you Sissy- I decided to contact the “nice” group facilitator who had originally suggested we meet up at a park outside of the group’s involvement. I sent her a friendly email to see if she wanted a play-date. Her response was very puzzling. It was like, “you can definitely re-join the group and I’d love to see you with the group. group. group. etc. GROUP.” Basically, more cult-mom’s agenda. I replied, assuming she’d never respond, saying, “I’m not really interested in the group, but thanks anyway and if you ever want to just have a play-date I’d be happy to meet up with you sometime.” She doesn’t respond for a few days (after she had responded within hours of the first email) and finally suggested we meet at a nearby park the following week. Okay, so this is the craziest part: She showed up, CLEARLY UPSET WITH ME! not to mention, with a major chip on her shoulder. I tried to be nice at first, but then just stopped all attempts at making conversation. I seriously started laughing out loud to myself at one point, because she was so cold and rude and very stand-off-ish, that it was obvious she was trying to teach me some kind of LESSON for snubbing her cult. UNBELIEVABLE. If you didn’t want to meet with me, WHY DID YOU? Seriously? I was so confused, but also a bit amused by the absurdity of the whole interaction. No one forced this play-date! Anyway, so it was unbelievably awkward, and completely ridiculous...but I guess it taught me?...something? Did it? Who knows. 

Anyway, I’ll keep you updated on more futile attempts to “put myself out there” and use “nothing risked, nothing gained” type affirmations daily to attract other friendly, flexible mommies...ugh, but until then, I will continue to rely so heavily on you, that it will force you to relocate close to me.

Alright my love. Please kiss those boys and let them know that Auntie can’t wait to see them in the next few weeks. Yay! 

Love you tons,

Sara