Dating for moms

My sister showed me this post about how making friends as a mom is a lot like dating. She breaks it down into the different "bases of mom dating." I straight snort laughed several times throughout the post! Here are a few of my favorite lines:

I go too deep too soon, which scares off a mom just asking how many kids do I have.  ”Do you mean in my home, or in orphanages around the world?  Here locally, or in a village in Uganda?  Have you ever considered sponsoring a child?  Wait, where are you going?  Wanna hear about malaria and deworming?”

Overly-intense eye contact.  Never use while discussing homeschooling, gluten, gun control, breastfeeding, marriage, red dye number 40, infertility, or Jesus.  I may have left a few things out.  If there’s a subject that might cause you to stop blinking and/or breathing, save it for fourth base and don’t unleash it at the park.

Third base is a play date at one of our houses.  This is a tricky base because your kids are now on home court and your new friend is going to see your daughter body slam her toddler to the ground and take back the toy that he just picked up.
-Have I told you about the time when we had people over to our house a few weeks ago and J chucked her sippy cup right into their daughters forehead leaving a nice goose-egg. So there's that. 

By third base, I’m full frontal hugging, so prepare for that.  If you’re my third base friend, get ready for our boobs smashed up together while I ask how you’re doing right in your ear.  If you answer that with any kind of trauma, I’m a-gonna pull it right back together for another mash up, breathe some words of encouragement into your ear, then pull back for some heavy eye contact.  (Upon reading this, my husband informed me, “Who are you kidding?  You’re easy.  You go for full frontal hugging on first base.”  So I’m a hug-slut.  Bring it in, ladies.  I’m ready.
-Joree here, just re-reading this made me go into a snort-laugh-fit (I think I may TM that one, SLF?...go with it). It's especially funny because I'm not a big hugger, but I think I secretly want to be? I think this is a product of being one of the younger children in the family. My parents were soft by the time it got to my younger brother and I. Hugging. Lots and lots of hugging at our house. J will in fact be the weirdest child wherever she goes because even mentioning the word "sorry" around her makes her slobber kiss the closest persons face off. Embrace the awkward! One last one regarding 'Fourth Base'...

Feel free to bust out your full-blown honk laugh, talk about how soy gives you diarrhea, and how you worry that you’re a crappy mom.  You’ve found your person.  She loves you for you.

This was so timely because today J and I went to the library for the reading time they have there. Except, I'm a lame mom and didn't realize that the reading time was no longer going on. Whoops! Anyways, we went to play with the puzzles they have up in their children's section and I saw another mom I had seen at story time. She sat down at the table with J and I, and I shocked myself by openly asking about herself and her cute little boy. And then, it happened. My awkwardness could only be tamed for so long. I was lost in thought debating what I wanted to ask her next, so lost that I just stopped talking and didn't ask her any follow-ups on her recent home birth experience. Eventually, her little boy got restless and they just left. So. Weird. Bahaha, sometimes I just have to laugh at the awkwardness. One thing is certain, the awkwardness will always be here. Now, if I could only learn how to tame it for extended periods of time!