Making Mommy Friends

My husband and I were the first among our group of friends to "pull the goalie" (as Matt would say) and have ourselves a kiddo. Some of our friends are starting the journey down the Trying To Conceive path, but among our closest friends, we're the only couple with a kid at the moment. I don't mind this. I don't feel like Roger has thrown a wrench in my social life in any way, BUT I find myself yearning for someone I can relate to. In the last 7 months, I feel I've spent far too much time discussing poop with people who don't really care to discuss poop and I've come to the realization that I desperately need to find myself a mommy friend, preferrably someone with a child near Roger's age.

Unfortunately at the moment between work and school, not to mention the fact that we're pretty financially strapped, something like a Mommy and Me class is out of the question (though I'm thinking of a way we can make it work during the summer when I'm out of school till August). That would be the most obvious avenue to find me some poop-discussing pals (okay, I don't really talk about poop that much). I'm at a loss at how else to make mommy friends. Some magazine article or book I read once upon a time suggested just striking up a conversation with a mom in a grocery store (or other similar place). I think the exact words were "she wants to talk to you as badly as you want to talk to her." Well, maybe. But I have this problem - I'm inherently SHY. It is extremely out of character for me to simply strike up a conversation with a total stranger, and furthermore, I wouldn't even know how to begin such a conversation. Le sigh. How to get over the shyness?

Well, a kind of amazing opportunity has placed itself at my doorstep. I don't generally believe in fate, but I can't imagine things like this happen too often. I'm not a WAHM, but Roger is a PATOB (Play At The Office Baby... I just made that up), so I'm lucky enough to bring him to work with me everyday. I have a Pack n' Play in my office, a walker, a highchair. Basically my own free, personal daycare with me as the care provider. Recently (in the last couple weeks) our company moved to a new office building, and at this new office building, in the suite directly adjacent to ours, there is another mom with a PATOB. I've watched her for a while now, unloading her car seat out of her car like my working mom twin (okay, is this starting to sound creepy?), and she seems to be roughly the same age as me with a baby who is roughly the same age as Roger. Hello? Is that Opportunity I hear knocking?

Yesterday, Opportunity quit knocking and just went ahead and walked right in. And you know what my stupid ass did? I pushed him back out the door. This mom and I happened to arrive at the office at the exact same time yesterday. We parked next to each other. We pulled our car seats out of the cars at the same time. I was totally unprepared. I wanted so much to strike up a conversation, perhaps comment on her mad skills in somehow perfectly fitting a car seat in a 2-door car. Instead, my damn shyness grabbed me by the throat and forced me to pretend like I was having trouble unlatching the car seat so that by the time I got Roger out of the car, she was already half way into her office. The thing that REALLY kills me, is that she was kind of looking into my car windows like she might want to talk to me too. But alas, I chose to be an Anti-Social Annie and blow a wonderful opportunity to make a mommy friend.

SO I've decided that some way, some how, I'm going to get over this dang shyness and just talk to her. I don't know that another perfect opportunity like the one that presented itself yesterday will ever arise again, but we do work in the same office building so we're bound to cross paths again sometime in the near future. I just need to remind myself that I won't find the mommy camaraderie I'm seeking if I stand idly by fretting over my silly shyness. Challenge accepted!