I Suck At Hanging Out With Meredith

This past Friday, Karen, our baby daughter (Briana), and I went to visit one of my friends (Meredith). Unfortunately, I suck at hanging out with Meredith. Meredith recently had a baby boy (Alexander) a couple of months ago. And naturally because I suck at hanging out with Meredith, I kept forgetting to contact her to see if we could stop by and meet her little bundle of joy.

Thanks to my friend (Marc) who left a voice message to remind me to call Meredith, I finally set the plan into motion. Thanks Marc! And so on Friday, we got to meet Alexander.

Interestingly enough, Friday was also the first time Karen and I had ever been to the Presidential Estates in Quincy. For anyone curious, Meredith happens to currently live in the Presidential Estates. The Presidential Estates area in Quincy is a lot bigger than I would have thought. I did not know there was that much land back there.

Anyway, Friday was a great time. Meredith's husband (Doug) made some home-made pizza for everyone. It was delicious. There was also bruschetta, which I heard was also good, but I unfortunately did not get to taste any because I was stuffed full of pizza.

The night actually turned out to be a play date of sorts. Briana, who doesn't really interact well with other children, did play and grab at Alexander's feet. (And for anyone curious, Alexander looks like a smaller version of Doug.) Shortly after of course, Briana started to fuss and we did what any parent would do: we threw her into this awesome looking contraption that Meredith and Doug owned. The thing looked like a souped up exersaucer.

Needless to say, much of the night involved talking about parenting and children and all of that. One of the highlights is that I got to see a cool picture taken by one of the doctors of Alexander coming out of Meredith "alien-style". Alexander's head was protruding through part of Meredith where she had the Caesarean section. It was neat.

Now, I don't really consider myself as one who always talk about my children. In fact, I generally try to talk about my children only whenever someone asks me about them. I guess that is one of the reasons why I don't post status updates in Facebook about what my child is doing. That said, after Friday night's experience, I can see why a lot of people in general do talk about their children.

For awhile, I have considered myself to be a pretty terrible father mostly because I have not read any books about parenting. Thus, there have been many times when people have asked me if Briana is experiencing such-and-such by a certain chronological time. In response, I would simply shrug my shoulders because I would have no clue. It's this feeling of not having an answer (and consequently feeling that I do not know what I am doing) that makes me feel like a bad father.

Similarly, Meredith had mentioned to me that she sometimes felt like she did not know what she was doing at times. Naturally, that got me thinking that perhaps the reason why some people do talk about their children a lot is to elicit validation or confirmation from others that what they are doing as a parent is... for lack of a better word... correct. It was just a random thought that entered my head. I don't even know if it is true or not.

Regardless, I had a great time on Friday. It was definitely nice to see Meredith again and meet her little bundle of joy. I feel that I don't really see Meredith as much as I would like. She's a great person. Although I suppose now that we can have play dates, perhaps I will be seeing her more often.