Hot Jogga-mama
My quest to find a jogger stroller might be over! My neighbor, a guy I like to call “The Friendly Dad”, is going to hook me up with a free one. FREE! Rock on. Blogs are good for something. Actually I don’t think he read that post where I asked about jogger strollers. I think he just knew somebody who had one and being the friendly guy that he is, he offered it to me while we were chatting at the park and swinging our babies.
Have you noticed how much friendlier people are when you have a kid? It’s like having a puppy but less flirty. I can’t believe it. I meet people every day who want to hang out with me and my kid. It must be because she is so cute. I don’t think it’s my captivating conversation skills because I’m shy in public and I have a mouse voice that nobody can ever hear.
Back in the day when I was a singleton I used to mope around coffee shops and pretend to read or draw in my journal, just wishing that some stranger would come up and say hi to me. Nobody ever did. Now I’m minding my own business, wishing to be invisible because I have baby food smeared all over my fore arm, and people are coming out of the woodwork to talk to me. It’s kinda nice.
I’ve actually contemplated making up cards with some kind of funny illustration of a mom and then a line for a play date time and day and my phone number or email or something. I don’t know, that idea is still percolating but I think it might be a good idea because I’ve wished I had something handy and cute (but not too pretentious) to hand out more than one time. I’ll keep you posted on that. Maybe even make printable pdf’s. (It’s about time I gave away something on this site.)
So back to the Friendly Dad. (I hope you don’t mind me calling you that Mr. B.) I’m just not accustomed to my neighbors actually being nice to me. I’ve been invited over for lemonade, I’ve met his wife and kids. I was invited to a block party, but I chickened out last minute and didn’t go and now I’m getting the hook up (hopefully) for a FREE jogger stroller. The Friendly Dad rules.
Hopefully since I’m blogging about this I’ll actually get up in the morning and take a jog with the stroller. You’ll have to keep me accountable, internet.
18 Comments
Nila
It is so easy to make friends with a cute baby in tow. Now that my kids are older with big giant teeth, and akward everything, it’s not so easy. I miss those days.
Enjoy your jog!
BeachMama
Congrats on the jogger, I LOVE mine. I don’t exactly jog, but I walk so fast that it is a necessity. That and the two 80lbs dogs that pull us around needed something sturdy to hold the kidlet. I use mine almost every day whether it is a walk to the store or a tour of the neighbourhood. I was also rollerblading with mine while hubby was running. Love it, love it, love it. Wouldn’t trade it for the world.
I also love your idea of the cards, I was thinking of making some simple ones up myself. I seem to be running into people I know and don’t have a pen handy to write calling info down. I am sure yours would be way cooler than mine ;)
Gretchen
I do have cards printed up with my name and cell phone number – that way, if I do want to meet up or have a playdate, I give them my card.
Hope the jog stroller works out – I love mine!
american girl
Cute babies rock! I can hardly get through the grocery store without 5-6 people (mostly older ladies) telling me how cute Cate is. I don’t really know how to respond to that…”um, yes, of course she is, she’s my daughter”? Don’t think so. Cate’s a very social little monkey, which helps me tone down my furrowed-brow-anti-social-grumpy face.
Enjoy the jog stroller! Love the card idea!
Carrie
I actually saw a place you can order playdate cards in one of the magazines I browse. They were insanely expensive, like 40 cards for $50. I do think it’s a handy idea and I’ve thought about printing up something like that myself since people do come out of the woodwork at the parks and things.
mipmup.
i make playdate cards! let me know if you want some! :D
Gramma
All that exercise every day ought keep the weight off and any extra flab holding on will certainly firm up. It’s true, people are friendly when you have your special little person with you.
Jennifer
How nice of Friendly Dad! I’ve been meaning to order some of those cards online. I think you’d probably make some that are much cuter that what I’ve seen available. I’d pay for personalized ones!! :) I’m tired of giving our personal info on scraps of paper that I find in the diaper bag. I agree that babies are friendly people magnets. I love taking my babe on errands with me. The magic starts to fade when they become more mobile and older though. My 4 year old sometimes repels people. :P
Xangelle
Free, eh? That’s sweet! Hope you have a blast tooling around town, making all sorts of new frinds!
Neil
So, are you suggesting we should get kids to meet people?
aunt kathy
I’m so glad you’re getting that stroller! I wish I had something like that when my kids were small. Then again, four toddlers/babies would not fit in one of those. I did end up using and old clunky twin stroller and pushed that up to the grocery store every other day. It was heavy! But I kept the weight off. Anybody have kids they want me to take for walks? The more, the better.
Yes, small kids and babies make people smile. Especially if they are happy and obedient kids.
Val
I love the card idea, and I would love having your drawing on it! Friendly Dad rocks.
CanadianProgrammer
As a web-designer myself, I couldn’t help notice a couple issues that you may not be aware of:
-You’re probably aware of this one… your latest illustration is too wide and breaks your column setup. (in XP/IE, anyways).
-I assume you put in some referrer rules to prevent image hotlinking.. but you didn’t put exceptions in for your dad’s blog. There’s several broken images on his site, including the header graphic.
-same thing applies to RapunzelsWorld. :)
josephine
I knew about the broken links on my Dad and Rapunzel’s page (and am working on a slow fix) but I didn’t know about the columns being messed up in XP/IE. I’m not surprised. I’ve been struggling with this template since day one. I use Safari so everything looks handy dandy to me. Maybe you could help me with my template code? I’ll email you.
sleepynita
Wouldn’t it just be eaiser for everyone else to get a mac….? ;)
sleepynita
ps. I am using Firefox and it looks perfect on here.
josephine
I do wish everyone had a mac. I fixed the illo and made it narrow… so that’s why it looks okay now. I think it depends on the resolution you have your monitor at. We macs tend to have lots of real estate while the pc-guys have mongo toolbars and buttons and microsoft stuff that takes up a lot of room and squishes my page around.
CanadianProgrammer
Yeah, send me an e-mail if you want any specific help. I don’t know anything about wordpress templates per se, but I do know html and css pretty well, so I’m sure I could be some help with what you want the end result to be, and we could figure out the templates together.
BTW: I’m running at 1280×1024 with no toolbars, so that’s not what was causing the problem. Even at this resolution, your blog is still only about 800 pixels wide though, and centered in the page with white margins.
-J