April 14, 2008
Since moving to our new house, the one where I give directions by telling people “You can’t miss it, it’s the one that looks like all the others”, we have gotten to know our next door neighbors pretty well, probably because I sometimes get confused and pull into their driveway, thinking it was mine, silly me. They have 2 little kids and Delaney sits perfectly right between them in age.
Being the only child that she is, Delaney has latched onto these children like a newborn to the boob. Not a day goes by, not an HOUR goes by, that she doesn’t PLEAD for me to let her play with these kids.
Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for the distraction and the play dates that occupy her time. And I’m happy to know that their parents are nice and normal, potential perfect neighbor material. We have had freakishly inappropriate neighbors before and so this change, it is good. I am also proud of Delaney for making friends. After watching her watch the neighbor kids through the holes in the fence, longing to play with them, for weeks, I am happy it has all worked out swimmingly in her little world. By the way, the Dude next door was all “Hey, we see your daughter’s eye peering through the fence all the time, it’s pretty funny” and Mike goes “Well, sometimes, that’s me.”
And it was really quiet.
And then they laughed.
With all the sarcasm that’s flowing around the battle station here, you might be surprised to know that we do, in fact, care what people think about us, we like to keep up appearances just as much as the Jones’. So, it was important to us that we try to control our daughter and her rabid attempts to suck the faces off of the neighbor kids.
We started off small, baby steps, having the kids over for an hour at a time and then sending Delaney over for an hour at a time over the span of 6-7 days we did this. But things started getting sketchy when Delaney decided she’d had enough of the rationed-out new-BFF-interactions.
The other day, I hear her doing her usual thing, playing, pretending, tormenting the dog in the backyard when all of a sudden, I realize I haven’t heard her. For like 10 minutes I hadn’t heard her. The backyard yielded nothing but cinderella crowns and a stick collection, then I turned the corner to see the gate wide open and knew she had escaped. Sure enough she was over at the neighbors.
I don’t know what was more embarrassing, that I didn’t know my child’s whereabouts for 10 minutes or that my neighbors thought I had sent my 4 year old over, unaccompanied, without a pre-cursor phone call. A tad mortifying, to say the least.
And then?
Like a moth to the flame, she does it again, 2 mornings later. I was at work but apparently, Mike said he awoke to the doorbell and our neighbor accompanying our sleepy eyed, bed-headed child swaddled in a living room throw blanket back to our house. Which, I have to commend her for thinking ahead and shielding herself from the bitter morning dew for her long trek across the front yard, A+ for preparation Delaney, A+.
But ya, the new neighbor first impression bit couldn’t be going any better, if you ask me!
Oh Hey again! Sorry my child so desperately wants to live at your house instead of ours! And clearly you see that our word is LAW around here because that talking to she got the other day for running away and not telling us? It CLEARLY instilled the fear of God into her.
So, here we were feeling like we’ve risen to the top of our parenting game, like our neighbors must think we are total schmucks, why else would a child rise in the morning and immediately plan her escape?
But lo and behold. All’s well that ends well. The universe smiled on us, because the younger of the two neighbor kids? Totally pooped her pants at our house today.
YES!
And that, my friends, is how you become pals with your neighbors here in the Wild West. You gotta settle the score, even things out. Our neighbors, you see, want to be friends with us, wanted us to know everything was okay, so they sent over their kid to shat her pants in our playroom. That’s how it works. It’s a natural progression. So now when one of THEIR kids does something embarrassing again, we’ve already talked about it, to keep the friendship going, we’re going to send Delaney over with a picture of Mike’s nipples.
Posted by Jamie @ 11:47 pm • Delaney
RSS feed for comments on this post.
TrackBack URI
April 15th, 2008 at 12:30 am, Tarah Says:
OK, so you call before Delaney runs over to their house? We have ALL the neighbor kids here at my house and I haven’t met the parents. They DON’T know us, and their kids live at my house. Do you ask them to please call before they come over????
Delaney is welcome over here anytime! We are only 5 min away girl. My kiddo stands at the fence and yells at anyone passing by to come over and play. that, my friend, is freaky!!!
April 15th, 2008 at 12:41 am, haze Says:
Perfect! I was getting worried for you until the neighbour’s kid evened the score.
This may make me sound old (and I am) but when I was a little girl, I would always go over to friends’ houses unannounced.
I never pooped my pants there though (or at least, not to my recollection).
April 15th, 2008 at 9:40 am, mama2roo Says:
OMG–you have a gift for telling a story. Thanks for the laugh this morning, really. The word “shat” made my day
April 15th, 2008 at 11:03 am, dcrmom Says:
LOL! Around here, our kids just run back and forth and in and out at will. (I do make sure they tell me where they’re going.) It sounds like you have just that sort of neighborhood. It’s fun, isn’t it??
April 15th, 2008 at 11:27 am, melissa Says:
You make me laugh with your writing; you’re awesome.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:37 pm, renee in seattle Says:
Hysterical!
When my yungun’ was 4 she scaled our backyard fence, picked up the neighbor boy, also 4, and they went on an adventure throughout the neighborhood. It took my 30 minutes to realize she was missing, and another 10 minutes of me frantically fast-walking around the neighborhood asking people if they had seen 2 small children wandering around by themselves, while the neighbors all look at me like, “seriously, you have lost your kid AGAIN? WTF??” I sometimes feel like I need a t-shirt that says “I Suck”
April 15th, 2008 at 12:40 pm, misty Says:
Too funny! And true, I saw none of this on the news so I do believe you are right about everything being ok!
April 15th, 2008 at 2:40 pm, Mayhem Says:
Thank you for the chuckle today!
I’m sure lots of us can relate (hopefully not just me)!
On one side of us the idolized neighbor kids are a little older, and my kids are glued to the fence and begging the poor neighbors to play with them whenever they are outside.
Our other neighbors have kids our age. I was horrified when my kid threw a screaming fit in front of their mom. (He didn’t want to share!) I felt SO much better when a few weeks later their kid pitched an identical tantrum. It was awesome.
April 15th, 2008 at 6:16 pm, Julie Says:
Uh, I think I’d rather deal with the escaped neighbor kid than the neighbor kid who poo’d in their pants at my house. I got enough poo in the pants around here with my own kids, thankyouverymuch.
April 15th, 2008 at 9:57 pm, starfish Says:
Freaking hilarious. I bet you never thought you’d be glad someone shit themselves in your house.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:12 pm, Half-Past Kissin' Time Says:
I have so done that driveway thing, too! Even scarier…I did it a block away (turned one street too early). Lucky for me, it was my sister’s house I was trying to find, so the neighbors didn’t know me and just thought I was some crazy woman.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:02 am, Chandra Says:
Gross! But hilarious. So did you install some deadbolts (high up of course) on your front and back door and an alarm system in her bedroom window. That’s pretty funny Jamie! Hope the wait is going quickly! Thinking of you and your sweet kiddo’s that you’ll soon be staring at pictures of
Chandra
April 16th, 2008 at 12:23 pm, Beth Says:
Oh yes. I remember when my eldest was an only. He was constantly begging to visit with the neighbors with three children. Lucky for us they lived across the street and he knew he couldn’t cross by himself.
It’s one of the reasons why we made him a little brother but he never seemed quite as interested in his own siblings as he was in the three across the street. The grass is always greener I guess.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:38 pm, Anna Says:
hilarious.
my brother and sister and i joke all the time about what the hell my mom was doing when we were kids - they found my brother in his pj’s at a church on sunday - like two miles away!
April 17th, 2008 at 6:24 pm, my minivan is faster than yours Says:
We were at a friend’s house for dinner Sunday night and the four kids were outside playing together. My husband went to check on them, and my 3 yo was running around their backyard with no pants on. The boy dropped trou and pooped on their rocks! Yep, right there outside in their dog run.
GRREAAAT!
April 19th, 2008 at 8:46 pm, Erin O' Says:
When I was a wee lass in “No” Haven, the custom was to stand outside one’s friend’s home and yell “Christy (or whomever), come out and play, come out and play!” There was no knocking upon doors, no calls, no such thing as a playdate.
Last year our older dude routinely snuck out of our house to our next door neighbors’, who are also our cousins. It freaked me out because we were having a tough time with attachment as it was, and to have him obviously prefer to be there, well, it was a bit embarrassing on many levels. Sigh.
And to add a comment to your “off to Vegas” post over here — I can totally relate to the excitement of being away from the brown-streaked Ariel undies. Except our brown streaks can be found in camo-undies. Have a blast!