Neighborhood Angels?

My husband and I moved in to our new home less than 3 months ago. We had the opportunity to come over and meet the previous owners before we moved in. During my visit there was a little girl of about 7 playing with the owners 3 year old in a little wading pool in the front yard. She introduced herself to me and was very chatty. I thought it was cute and friendly. Now that I have moved in I see the error of my ways. By being friendly with this little girl I opened the flood gates of constant interruptions and knocking on my door up to 6 times a day by this little girl and her older sister who is 9. There is rarely a time when these two girls are not outside playing in our cul-de-sac. By all appearances, they live outside. They come over and ask to play with my daughter, who is just 2 years old. It has become quite clear to my husband and I that it is not my daughter they want to play with, but rather my husband or I. They know that when they ask to play with my daughter that I or my husband come with the package. Once outside they immediately start lobbing balls at me or ask me to push them on my daughter's tricycle or some such other thing. When I tell them we are busy they ask if we can give them some toys to play with. A colorful beach ball disappeared from our front yard less than 2 weeks after we moved in. If I tell them I am busy they will come back about every half an hour to see if I'm "still busy". They do not take no for an answer, but rather pretend not to have heard me and stand in my door telling me about their family, their day, their school, their friends, and the grand plans they have to sell homemade lotions door to door. Last weekend they came to my door asking for money they were going to donate to a dog charity. There is always some reason they need to be standing at my door. It appears to me that they are just absolutely desperate for any adult attention they can get. However, if you asked my 2 year old, she would say there isn't enough attention to go around as it is. While I am sad there are children in this position, I don't feel it is my responsibility to become the neighborhood best friend to every neglected child turned out unsupervised on to their unsuspecting neighbors. The other disturbing thing about these girls coming to my door is that my daughter really does want to play with them. And when I say no she has a meltdown that she can't go outside with them. I have, several times, taken her outside to play but the girls aren't really interested in her as much as they are me. And they frankly, aren't very nice to her. They see her as a bothersome toddler. Asking to play with her is just a ploy and it's making me come to really dislike these girls. I am constantly having to remind myself that they are children and that I am an adult and need to control my temper. I really just want to give them a piece of my mind. So today I face an uncomfortable task. I have to make it clear to the girls, for the second time, that they can no longer come to our door. They can no longer follow me in to my house with the excuse that they were helping me bring in the groceries. They can no longer come to the front door and peer inside the window to see if they can see me inside when I don't answer. I hate being in this position. I hate that I have to parent someone else's kids. I walked over to meet their mom once and I got the sense that mom is aware of the issue but would rather leave the problem to the neighbors than to deal with it herself. Perhaps I'm wrong about this but the girls have some very sketchy things to say about life at their house, particularly mom. This whole thing has been eating me alive. Perhaps I'm making a mountain out of a molehill but I can't sleep. I lay awake at night thinking about how I am going to bring this problem to an end. I guess I don't feel like I should be in this situation but I have a child and perhaps someday I will be in this situation. Perhaps the parents are completely unaware of the problem and would be shocked to learn of it. Perhaps they would be completely blind-sided if I told them their daughters, who hardly know us, throw their arms around us for hugs, poke my husband in the belly and pull on his cap, make fun of my daughter, and tell me my armpits have gotten to hairy. Perhaps they would be shocked to learn that their daughters seem to have absolutely no sense of others personal boundaries. Perhaps they would be surprised to know that they appear to outsiders as not having any manners, politeness, or respect, particularly for adults. Perhaps.....
I know this goes on in other neighborhoods but I feel like the only person in this neighborhood. I never see these girls knocking on anyone else's door but mine. My guess is that the other neighbors may have already dealt with this and put an end to it. Well I'm off to take the sign off my door that says "No Visitors". I have to put this up to keep them from ringing my bell. It doesn't usually take more than 5 minutes of taking the sign down before they are at my door. Here goes....

Kitchen Counter Therapy

Here I sit at my kitchen counter, THE BIG LAUNCH, my blog. Why a blog? I'm not really the type, but that's the thing. I've become the type. Motherhood has changed my life and so it has changed me. My connection to the outside world, most days, is the laptop sitting on my kitchen counter. I used to be a telecom administrator working for big companies, running large phone systems. I once had a company pay me big money to move to Phoenix, Arizona to help start a new office there. And now, 6 years later, I'm a married, Stay At Home Mom with a 2 year old daughter, and an ambiguous identity as to where I fit into the world. So here I sit, at my kitchen counter, forming my identity and stretching my virtual arm into the internet world at large. Don't get me wrong. I love being a mother, I love my daughter, and my husband. But I'm not going to dress it up in a pretty wrapper and bow. Most days are boring, busy but boring. My brain has turned to mush, my sex drive is nonexistent, I'm ready for bed by 8pm, and the last book I read was "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle. I don't enjoy getting down on the floor and playing, I don't like coloring, and I don't like galloping around the living room neighing and pretending to be a horsey, or as my 2 year old calls it, a Horhay. So this is where the judging comes in. Mothers are judged, BY EVERYONE. Society, particularly Western, and dare I say AMERICAN, loves to judge a mom. They love to tell us what we should be spending our time doing with our kids, how much time we should be spending with our kids, what we should feed them, how we should play with them, what we should read to them, whether they should watch TV, how we should discipline them, etc etc etc. EVERYONE's AN EXPERT. As far as I can tell, from speaking to generations of mothers that came before me, there has never been so much focus on how we should raise our kids as there is now. I tell ya, it's driving me nuts. And the real rub is that mothers are their own worst judges. We feel guilty over absolutely everything. We painfully research nearly every decision we make in regards to our kids and then we still feel bad that it might not have been the right one. It's crazy and it's making moms crazy. So many of us are absolutely killing ourselves to look like we are great at it, that we love it, and that it's totally fulfilling. I have spent the first 2 years of my daughters life going back and forth between hoping for the fulfillment to come, and being in the depths, absolutely convinced that it never will and this is it. I will never again know who I am, what I enjoy, feel connected to others, or find a life of my own. That everyday of the rest of my life will be a selfless pursuit in pleasing others. Now some of you may be thinking how selfish I am. Fine, judge if you wish. I can't stop you. Others may be identifying. My new pursuit is to not care so much what others think, to find confidence in myself and my mothering, and to GIVE UP THE GUILT. Our kids need love most of all and my daughter gets more of that than she knows what to do with. I am at home with her all day so she also gets her fair share of attention, whether undivided or not. She needs for nothing. But I do, and I intend to figure out what it is and go for it. It may take me ten years but here goes.....
Normally I am much more humorous, something else I seem to have lost a bit of along my journey. But it's a gloomy June day, my daughter has like the tenth cold she's had this year, and my humor decided to sleep in, while my cynicism got up at 5:30am. Catch me next time.