We moved across the country almost two years ago. Leaving behind my growing friend group was hard. We moved from a place where everyone I knew in our neighborhood, at daycare, at work, was around the same age as me. They were having kids at the same time. They were also working parents. We were one of the few families that had three kids.

In our new home and community, we were initially surprised to find so many other parents who also had three young children. We would exclaim every time we found another family like ours. Finally we realized, it's totally normal here! Lots of people have more than three kids.

Most of the moms around here are much younger than me though.

I would go to school drop offs and pick ups and the other parents hardly spoke to one another. There were some that clearly had relationships, but most of the time we would just stand around in awkward silence. I could bridge the gap with the preschool parents because it was a smaller group that I would see twice a day, but it rarely moved beyond talking at school.

I had planned to use this summer to spend more time with friends and less time going places. The pandemic derailed those plans, but I have still been able to make friends.

All I have to do is step outside my front door.

When we see someone walking by, we rush out the door to meet them. It's such a small effort, but it's really all it takes to cultivate relationships.

We expand on this by taking walks around the neighborhood and stopping to talk with whoever we meet. We've exchanged numbers with our new friends so we can plan things, but for me the unplanned meetings are the best.

I fondly remember when people would just stop by my house. I missed that. It felt like it required so much effort to get together with anyone. The texting and planning required made it so much easier to just be on our own and do our own thing. We would try a couple times with someone, but rarely end up even seeing them. With three small kids it's so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and just stop putting forth the effort.

Stepping outside our front door and just exploring our neighborhood allows us to have impromptu play-dates. We might see someone over at the playground. We might see someone out for a walk. We might notice that friends are in their backyard and stop to play.