Who are your friends?

[punkrockmama]

Most of my friends are not parents. I am the first in my closest cirlce to get married and have kids. I do know other moms and have one person I would consider a true friend to me that also has kids (I met her at the grocery store when I was pg with Peyton,lol).

DH has lots of contacts with children. Mostly older, junior high school/high school age kids. One or two of the couples he knows have just recently had their first.

We don't have many people we hang out with joinly as DH isn't one to have really close friends. They are mostly golf buddies who have a great time golfing and taking golfing trips, but don't call each other every day to see what's up, IYKWIM. I, on the otherhand, have close friendships and talk/ hang out with them, not all the time, but a good amount. Some of them kinda don't get me now that I have a family, but that's cool, we are just at a differen't place and people will come in and out of your life as you live it. And I totally get that it might not be the most fun thing to come over my house for a cup of tea,lol. I'm not the party girl I used to be.

So, who are you're friends? With the other parents, where do you fall? Are you the first, or did they all tell you it was about time when you had your babies? How often do you all get together? A weekly/monthy girl's night out? A bbq every once in a great while?

[JBaxter]

Most of our friends have kids of various ages. DH does still have some unmarried friends. ( BTW anyone in Maryland want to meet a workaholic highly educated career guy?)

[newmomto3kids]

I have to say that I am blessed with wonderful friends, actually the best friends anyone could ever ask for.
I was the first one of my group of friends at the time to have kids (with the exception of one of my friends from high school who had a baby early.) Most of that original group of friends (from college, mostly) fell away after I had kids. I still talk to them but not often.
But, they were replaced by awesome friends.
I have my best friend from childhood whom I have known for almost 30 years (gasp!). She introduced me to my husband and has been there for all the big and little events of life.
My friend from high school who lives far away but we still see eachother.
I have some of my old coworkers from before kids. We all have kids now and even though they were not really close friends before we had kids, we have really gotten close since having kids.
I have a few friends in the neighborhood. And one who moved away, who we still go visit.
I have cousins that live nearby that I am close to.
All in all, we see *someone* every weekend. Our kids are blessed to know many other kids, there are always kids around here for one reason or another.
Great post, thank you!!

[lizajane]

i don't have friends without kids. my friends who haven't had kids yet never call us, never invite us anywhere and we aren't really in a place to host dinner parties right now.

i have four friends that we met in the neighborhood walking around. i met sonia (martiesmom) in birthing class. i have a friend from high school who lives 30 mins away.

of course, my friends have just had babies or are pregnant right now. so i kinda feel like i don't have any friends! they are all really busy or feeling crummy.

[holliam]

Well, I have many long-time friends (I'm almost 37 so have friends from childhood, high school, college, former states, etc.) who I keep in touch with. Pretty much all of them have children, and we were among the last to start.

We moved to our current area 6 months before starting our adoption process. So, all of our local friends are people we've met because we are parents. We have friends in different playgroups (adoption/Guatemala, AP/NFL parenting, multi-racial families, Pagan families, homeschooling families), and we have become close friends with several of them. One of my friends from high school coincidentally lives here too (we went to hs in NJ and we are in NC now so it is a huge coincidence) and her daughter is a month younger than mine so we see her family a lot.

I honestly feel like we finally have a lot of close friends again, and I haven't felt this way since college, even though we had friends at workplaces, etc.

Holli

[octmom]

I keep in touch with one friend from high school and several from college, but we are all scattered geographically so we don't see each other often. Most of them have kids now and we tend to use e-mail to send pics and keep each other up-to-date, but there are definite lulls when no one writes, usually followed by a flurry of messages when someone has news, like a pregnancy. My first child falls near the middle age-wise.

Before kids, DH and I went out a good amount, often to see live bands. We don't have much of a chance to do that anymore and neither do most of the friends we spend time with these days. The friends I am closest to now and keep up with on a daily or at least weekly basis are other moms I know through daycare. Three of us (sometimes a fourth who kind of drives the rest of us crazy) meet for lunch as often as we can swing it, weekly if we can manage it. Our families get together on weekends fairly often, probanly once a month or so. The guys like each other and our kids are mostly all around the same ages-- one 5 year old, three around 3 years old, and 3 babies between 5-7 months old.

Our weekends often consist of lots of errand running after not being able to get those things done during the week since we both work FT. Our friends tease us because we tend to do it all as a family. The call us Team (LastName). :) So, maybe we just don't have time to hang out with friends that much anymore. Shrug.

Jerilyn
DS, Sean 10/03
DD, Katie 3/06

"Baby makes days shorter, nights longer, home happier, and love stronger."

[C99]

My husband is a "I have 3 really good friends and that is all I need" kind of guy. So although I have a circle of mommy friends and a circle of non-mommy friends, we generally don't socialize as a couple with other families extremely often. As a couple, we see my BIL (DH's brother) and his kids on a regular basis, especially during football season, and Cara (newmomto3kids) and her family about once/month.

But with the big exception of Cara, most of my daily-contact friends now are not the friends I had when I was in college or working. I socialize regularly with at least 2 women I met through the BBB, actually. And I've been a part of a playgroup for over 3 years, and see almost everyone outside of playgroup meetings as well. My social circle has expanded even more now that Nate is in school, as it's a co-op so it's easy to meet other moms/parents. It's funny, but I pretty much run into the same people over and over now that I've found my little social niche. I am also getting out more now that my kids are older (for now!) and I have more of a reason to carve out a little me-time. I'm the same age as most of the people in my playgroup, but (at 32 w/ a 3-y/o) on the young side for moms at Nate's co-op.

As far as my college friends go...it's a small circle and most of them are not married or have kids. I am just as guilty of not calling them as they are with me, so I tend to see them in spurts for maybe a month, and then not at all for 4-6 months at a time. My post-college/working friends are only now just getting married, so I think it will be awhile before they have kids.

[kboyle]

dh and i are pretty lucky i guess since we have a small group of friends that have kids that are all about the same ages as both ds' that we were friends with pre-kids. and MOST of our friends that we had pre-kids we still talk/hang out with.

actually, in general, when we do see our friends we've got our kids with us and they (non-kid friends) LOVE them. dh has lots of friends that actually come to our kids bday parties!

since we've had kids we've hung out with the same couple every year on new years eve, first their was just their daughter, then charlie, then their other daughter, then max, now this year, all the kids will be over 1 so i'm sure it will be tons of fun! small amts of booze, and small kids playing with new toys will sure make for great home videos!

i'm first of my friends to have kids/get married, but the best friends that i've had since high school are still my best friends now. my bf is charlie's godmother, and i was in my other bfs wedding as matron of honor less than 1 month after having max...the bachelorette party was about 2 weeks after having max!

my one friend lives in chicago, so we meet up whenever she comes into town and have drinks, probably once a month. my other friend and i do lunch with the kids once or twice a month..but she comes over often and i talk to both of them at least a few times a week...probably daily ;)

dh really hasn't changed friends since he was in hs either, and he graduated 15 years ago.

i do feel very lucky to say that dh & i haven't really "lost" any friends since we've had kids...we really haven't really gained any "new" friends together, i have, but really, we've just kept to our LARGE tight circle of friends.

[ellies mom]

We moved away from my circle of close friends that I hung out with pre-baby but now that we are all in our mid 30's everyone is getting married off and having babies anyways. We still get together when we go back to visit family.

In our "new" area almost all of my friends are moms I met through our play park. Ray isn't one for a lot of close friends either but most of his work buddies have kids.

[aliceinwonderland]

Most our friends do not have kids. They are also scattered geographically. My best friend (from high school) just got married and lives in Rome, for example. We;ve moved too much...

[kijip]

I have friends that are all different ages. However, my core of closest friends (the ones that can call you in the middle of the night if they need a ride to the airport to fly out right away to see a dying relative, the ones you actually tell the truth when they ask how you are doing) are fairly close to my age (22-32) and all of the ones from BEFORE Toby was born do not have children. Since Toby was born, I've met a few families IRL that we have become really close to.

My friends and I from before Toby get together a fair bit. Most are now married, but without kids. Standing weekly dinner invites, regular brunches every other weekend or so. Traditional (to our group!) seasonal events- Anti-holiday party with bad TV, beer tasting in the fall, birthdays throughout the year.

The friends we have made post Toby are included on a fair bit of the above, plus regular play dates and we also tend to get together with them for things like Thanksgiving and Christmas eve.

I was just shy of 23 when Toby was born. That is really uncommon in my socio-economic demographic in my geographic region. Toby was over a year old before I felt like I had REAL friends with young babies. So i know what you are going through to some extent.

[Moneypenny]

Most of my friends are work friends - some have kids, some don't, although I think I'm closer to the ones with kids. We get together maybe once a month outside of work.

DH has one good friend from college and we are friends with his little family now (he and his wife have two young kids). He has gotten to be pretty close to a couple of the guys from their SAHD playgroup, who, of course, have kids.

Here's my confession - that's really too many friends for me. I like people, but only on a casual basis, LOL. I'm a very nice person, really I am, and people like me (at least they SAY they do ;)), but I just prefer to be by myself.

Susan
mama to my cutie pie, Avery
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[hez]

It's a mix. Most of our church friends (the group we hang out with the most) are married with kids from 0-6. Some are not, and we still invite 'em over for parties and whatnot, of course. Our work friends are all over the map, but the ones we're closest to now have kiddos right around Payton's age. DH's alumni friends (quite a few in the area) are all finally married with young kids.

We have a few friends with older kids, which is great from a babysitter standpoint.

In the church group we were just about last of the marrieds to have kids. In the work and alumni groups, we were first (though we're younger than most of that crowd!).

We hang out wherever and whenever. Some portion of the church group gets together at least weekly, and we see most of 'em at dinner on Wednesdays before choir. The work and alumni friends (some overlap there) get together randomly-- for kids' b-day parties for instance.