Northern California Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Re: list "Obnoxious/Crazy Things People with Kids Do" here
This thread totally shows people are here lurking and only come out and post for some stuff...
Donate to My Pancreatic Cancer Research Page
Come out come out wherever you are.
If H doesn't get naps you get to see a screaming melting person....him too, lol. Seriously though...bed time is our one steadfast because otherwise I'm up all night with him. A weekend away (out of schedule) takes 3-4 nights to get back on schedule. (Sleep is a hard one for us.)
The other "crazy" I'm guilty of is just saying no to adult only nights because either I can't get a sitter, the sleep issue noted above or (and I don't think this has been said on the other post yet) I get so little play time with H that those evenings are hard to give up. I get about 3 hours of awake time with H on a weekday evening....so weekend playtime is precious to me. It sucks to not see my friends as much and I know when it isn't ok to bring the kid, but it still means I won't see my friends as much and will turn down invites sometimes. My friends without kids or even more so, my single friends, just sigh at me....alas, I just shrug my shoulders. My kid is not even 2, give me a break.
I appreciate you sharing that insight.
DH and I have reached out to a number of couples (mainly from his work) with kids and said, "Hey, we're happy to come over and just hang out with you three and we don't care what we do. We'd probably otherwise be at home bored and we'd have much more fun getting to see you." And then never hear anything. Mind you, these are people that don't even know we're not sure we want kids. It just strikes me as bizarre that we'd essentially volunteer for a night of Dora the Explorer or something and not get the invite. Kinda frustrating and obviously we inevitably drift apart.
Is it so hard to believe that we like you and want to see you enough to not need something wildly entertaining to happen during our visit? Or that we don't find hanging out with your munchkin appalling? Or that *gasp* even though we don't have/want a kid we actually are really interested to hear about you and your experiences with having one?
Maybe we're in the minority here, but I feel like some parents voluntarily choose to isolate themselves from their childless friends, even when those people are happy to adjust the friendship to accommodate the new family addition. And I just think that's really unfortunate.
Women don't want to hear what men think,
women want to hear what they think, in a deeper voice
yes. and everyone in the house pays for it.
Your post made me smile.
My close friends are definitely subjected to nights like you decribed...ask Stef about watching Princess and The Frog last weekend, lol.
If they were friends that we'd never had over previously, I'd feel guilty. Maybe everyone thinks their own life is boring and doesn't want to bore others. So, I'd try to have a fun semi-adult night, with minimal kid distraction. Even that though is hard for some people.
If you're serious about doing a Dora night then really don't take no for an answer. Or offer a daytime meet up when maybe bathtime and bedtime routines don't distract from hanging out and bbq. Keep asking....sometimes it takes me a few times to get the schedule ironed out to just have people over.
You are a good friend for caring and you are right...some people do isolate themselves voluntarily....or worse, they isolate themselves and don't even realize what they are doing.
Yep the nap thing is something that if you don't have kids it's much harder to grasp. My brother doesn't understand it at all and I"m sure we drive him nuts scheduling family things around Taylor's nap time.
I think the headbands are adorable (well... provided, ya know, they aren't digging into your child's skull or something).
Women don't want to hear what men think,
women want to hear what they think, in a deeper voice
i'm not super strict w/ nap time, just as long as she gets one, i'm fine. bedtime, i'm a bit more stricter w/ .. i need MY downtime.
Nope! Your adorable daughter has hair! Her headband serves a purpose, and it's a part of her outfit. I've seen a newborn with no hair and a huge bow (which the parents said was specifically so that nobody mistook her for a boy). I thought that was weird.
WO's post is interesting...I will have to be concious of this b/c like R said I often feel like our day-to-day is "boring" or, in my case, our dog is too hyper for people who aren't dog people, for example...I can only imagine that I could tend to feel even more so when we have a little one contributing to our lives becoming even more scheduled and rigid...and Dora filled
I've been thinking a lot about the comment about wanting to hang out with your friends with kids without the kids and I really find it unrealistic...at least in the early years. Before kids, maybe I would have thought "just get a sitter" or even "just leave them home with DH" but now I know the reality of that.
Q's actually been a really great sleeper. He even will walk himself into his bedroom to show us he's ready for bed but bedtime (thus far at least) is a mommy function in our house because I'm still breastfeeding. Q used to go down super early and I have been known to sneak out (leaving Q with either a sitter or DH) but for about the 1st year, that meant being home by 9-10 pm for that feeding. Now he's not going down until about 8 and leaving after that is hard because I need my sleep too and there's no snooze button on a kid at 6 or 7am. Not to mention the cost of a sitter...I've got a steal in the girl across the street but I know a lot of people pay $10+ an hour.
Leaving him alone in the middle of the day means finding a sitter, having them over to play and acclimate, before I can even think to go somewhere more than a few minutes away. Even then, I'd have to plan around naps because I wouldn't want to put him down and not be here when he woke up.
Add to that the fact that I want to spend all the time with him that I can (oh, and hang out with my DH every once in a while) and your request to hang out without kids borders on rude.
Since Q (especially once he was 6 months old and started going to bed before 6pm) we've done a lot of entertaining here at our house but sometimes it's backfired and Q hasn't been able to settle with the extra people (I can think of one night in particular when he cried and screamed for 2 hours and finally fell asleep 15 minutes after our guests finally left) I would not want to invite people over who were not already close friends.
This is a lot of the reason I haven't been to a g2g in the last year.