When Nathan was a few months old, my neighbor from across the street and I started getting together every month for an hour to get our boys together for a play group. Her boy is one month older then my boy… later on we found another mom with a son born the same month as my neighbor’s boy through the Moms Club in our school district, and we rotated houses and met the 2nd Saturday every month at 9am for a play date.
We met for a good year every month, and some months one of us would cancel due to something coming up or an illness, etc. Well, I got pregnant last February and I made it to almost all of the playdates and I’d say 85% of the time they asked for me to have them at my house (which was fine). In May we met at a pumpkin patch that had a freebie for kids to pot a plant for their Moms. After that, I became very busy with clearing out our spare office so we could move my son into a ‘new’ room so we could make his old nursery into the baby’s room. We painted his room, got new bedding, painted Autumn’s room, I had to refinish her furniture (we used my old childhood furniture), etc., etc. On top of this I get my hair done on Saturday mornings every other month, we have a Parents as Teachers lady come out every other month as well AND my mother in law comes in town every 1-2 months and stays with us. Oh, and then I had doctor appointments and also just a huge to-do list every weekend and I wanted to get a lot of things done before I got too HUGE!
Well… what happened was I missed three months of playdates. I still saw the one neighbor outside or at other Moms Club events but the other Mom I haven’t seen in probably a year! Well, I missed these three months of playdates because I had other things that came up that I could not cancel. I went to a Halloween party that the Moms Club had and the one mom was acting distant from me, even asked the other mom if she could take pics of their kids together but did not invite me or even look at me to ask if I wanted my son in the picture. I was a few weeks away from having Autumn and she did not ask me how I was doing or anything. Basically I said Hi to her and she just ignored me. I brushed this off but emailed her a couple of times after that and never heard back. The other mom lives across the street from me and was still friendly towards me.
FLASHBACK to 4 months after Autumn is born…Present..Now.. These two moms are hosting the Spring party for this Moms Club. I email the mom that I haven’t talked to in over a year to ask her to sign my kids up and I also asked her how she was doing. NO RESPONSE for a week. I try to email her on her work email, and when we were friends she’d always write back right away. Well, NO RESPONSE for two days! I start to wonder if I should call her but now I’m nervous about calling her because I am pretty sure she is mad at me but I think why would she be mad over playdates? I mean everyone gets busy, right?
So, today she finally wrote me..and as much as I hate to copy/paste emails, this is what she wrote me:
Carrie-
I did get your email the other day, however if it doesn’t come to my work address I usually am bad at responding. I am on the computer very little at home, Sorry. I will put your son & daughter on the list for attending the Spring Party. Please send me a check for $6.00 as soon as possible or you can give me a check at the April meeting.
I am not mad at you and I am sorry that you thought that. However I was disappointed/frustrated last Spring/Summer when almost every time we had a scheduled a playgroup you had already planned something. Since you were the one who wanted to start the playgroup in the first place I just thought you might have made it more of a priority. Anyway, I know when you work full time the weekends get very busy.
CC (CJ is Jami’s son) and K are doing very well. We have decided to send K to SS for Kindergarten in the Fall and were starting to plan for CC’s 3rd Birthday Party.
Hope Nathan and Autumn are doing well and that you are enjoying being a Mother of 2!!! Take care.
XX
So, I am not sure how to write back or how to regard this email. This is why I hate emails.. I think she is hurt and I understand that but what bothers me I guess is that she doesn’t want to be ‘friends’ because I was too busy to meet up for a few months. I still wanted to be in the play group but I also needed time out of it for a few months. I don’t know how to write her back, I feel like I should apologize but then why should I apologize for being busy? It wasn’t like I planned these things on purpose to avoid her, it was things I had to get done. Plus, I really don’t think anything I say now will change her opinion, whatever we had as friends is gone, wouldn’t you agree? This whole thing is sort of stressing me out though and now I am nervous about seeing her at the Spring party. I would never get mad at someone for not being able to make a play date, heck even if they couldn’t do the play dates anymore I would understand. Life is busy- especially with kids. Why does she have to be so hard on me? Ahwell… maybe I am reading into it too much.
What do you all think? How should I respond to her email? Help! I am not good at this… I will see her every so often so I want to be friendly but I also feel she is being a bit hard on me. Sigh.
Sorry just had to vent.
