Friday, September 9, 2011

Try, Try Again...

The most difficult part of this move came in the way of my four year old son. One afternoon he approached me with tears in his big blue eyes, and asked me if I could go find him some friends. One word, heartbreaking.

I told my sweet boy that I would do the best I could to find him some friends, and I have now been on a mission. I posted a group play date invitation for older kids that still are not in school on our neighborhood's Yahoo! group page. I got a really good response and I was so excited that I had to tell my boy that Mommy was doing a really good job at trying to find some friends. I made a date for a playgroup and volunteered my home for everyone to meet at. This in and of itself is way out of my comfort zone. I don't really relish the idea of people I have never met coming to my house to spend a couple of hours and play with all the toys. However, it was for the greater good.

The day of the playgroup arrived and we were psyched! The floors were clean and the toys were organized. I made sure we had snacks for the kids and extra sidewalk chalk at the ready. We were expecting people to start arriving at 10:30. Time ticked slowly and by 10:50 I realized nobody was coming. I was livid! I know I can't take the no shows personally because I have never met these moms and kids, but the sting was still sharp. Now, I had to figure out how to break the news to my son while he was watching for his "new friends" out our living room window.

I made a quick call to my husband (who was incidentally way more upset than me)to get some advice on how to break it to our boy. I decided to act like it wasn't a big deal and then tell him we were picking daddy up for lunch and then going to the library to get more movies and books! After delivering the news with as much perk as I could he just looked at me and said, "Why does nobody in Arizona want to be my friend? All the kids are rude here." And that was how my heart officially broke.

We still had a good day, despite our initial let down, and I have decided that despite my disappointment I am going to try to schedule a neighborhood play date one more time. I am doing this for my little boy, who desperately wants someone to play with, because if it were up to me I would not respond with grace and another play date invitation. I just hope that it will turn out better this time, otherwise I will have to move to another plan.