Once upon a time I felt worried and stressed, though excited, about play dates. I am one for routines and schedules and tidy, neat orderly days. So I worried when play dates occurred over nap-times or feeding times (seems I have sensitive babes who not only need their naps, don't really eat well around busy-ness - they need quiet calm--or something like that!).
But I came to need and love these visits and a great friendship or two really evolved out of my last mat leave mommy dates...
And so, of course, I am on mat leave number two and am trying to relive those wonderful play-date memories with current play-dates.
Sounds awesome, rejuvenating and wonderful, non?
Well, it is - kind of.
Only...now there are four children, not two...and two of them are two...terribly two...and the other two are nursing and/or fussy, and very often, needing something...
So these visits, while a necessary break from parenting and babbling to babes all day long, become a true test of focus and patience.
Picture it: both moms nursing, trying to simultaneously carry on a linear, focused conversation, while their two year olds fight over a toy. Then one child bashes the other over the head with that very important toy. So one mom, boob and babe in hand, has to get up and discipline, while still continuing the very interesting conversation - and still feed the child.
Sounds amazingly impossible non?
Now picture this routine looped, again and again. Because if there is one thing two year old children are good at, it's testing their parents patience and continuously needing to be disciplined...
Like when we were watching the little ones downstairs and they somehow made their way upstairs, and we, still feeding our babes, make our way up there in what we think is ample time, and find our two year olds both singing merrily as they artistically colour my leather couches with the chalk they absconded from the downstairs chalkboard center...
(all I can say is thank God jb was not around!)...
And so, while I do love these visits and need them, they may truly be more trying than nursing in public. And since I've already established how uncomfortable and awkward that is, I am sure you now understand how chaotic it is to try and have a play date with four babes two and under....
Not even sure we got one conversation completed.
Oh and add to the mix the adults' combined lack of sleep and we really have what could be a frenetic comedy act that might be like watching a Woody Allen movie (that is to say, too much chatter that goes nowhere...)...
But I still love these dates... And I still need these disjointed adult conversations...
Funny how our lives and expectations change: I once was able to sit for hours in coffee shops or pubs and talk about the most philosophical of topics and I could focus. I mean these conversations really went somewhere.
Sadly, no longer.
Oh well!
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