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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am an extroverted person and making friends comes easily. 
I am also loyal and put in the work in friendships that they need to sustain. I make the phone calls, go out on a limb and invite people to things, return emails, I attend functions when its possible for me to and not flake out because its easier.

My 4 best friends are my mom, sister and two sister-in-laws.
We talk every single day.
I have friends from high school that I reach out to regularly. Some i've kept all along and some I reconnected with through Facebook after I had a child. They similarly had babies around the same time and we had that in common. We joined running (with stroller) groups, went mall walking, etc. You could reconnect with people on Facebook. Shoot them a message and ask to meet for coffee or wine or whatever suits you.

I have friends that I made through work. Most of them started out as drinking buddies pre-husband and pre-babies. We keep in touch and get together when we can. You can befriend someone at work the daily proximity makes it easy. Find someone that makes you laugh or that you enjoy their qualities and pursue something there.

You can make friends by joining sport teams or the gym.

Some of my closest friends lately have been wonderful families that I've met through my child's school. I pick DD up every night and make conversation with the other parents that are also there. I started by inviting one lady (and her child) that i thought looked nice and i enjoyed talking to, to go ice skating with me and my DD. This led to more get togethers, wine nights, family trips together.

Yes it is work but it's worthwhile.
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Your situation is very atypical for most DCUM families. Many are not from around here, so no family support (which makes life way easier in general freeing up time for investing in friendships and maybe even free babysitting). And the network of friends from high school and pre-kids work are hard to replicate.

We moved here and had kids within 2 years so not much time to develop friends in that lets hang out spontaneity phase.  Plus we live inner suburbs and work in DC, but all our co-workers live far away at least outside beltway so logistics is quite complicated to just meet up.

School seems like good option, but we find most folks already have friends from the earlier stages of their lives so we don't know how to break in. On top of our two working parent no support scenario which results in a constantly messy house and little free time for spontaneity.

Sounds like you have it good PP; I wish I grew up in a place I would have liked to stay and raise a family, or at least had professional jobs to give that option! Enjoy your good fortune. [/quote]

Not my experience. I'm from Chicago and I have 3 best friends and then we have a wider circle of people we hang out with,  including husbands and kids. Of my 3 best friends, one is from Pennsylvania, one from Massachusetts, and the other from North Carolina. [/quote]

So to be clear, you made these friends from all the other states *AFTER* having kids and working full time?  B/c my point was that most people around here seem to make a core circle of friends when they are young and not working, maybe even not married so can be spontaneous and hang out after work or join kickball league or what not.

B/c we work at nonprofits, we are unusual in living close on, all of our colleagues when we were childless commuted from far out (we live in Bethesda, but coworkers are in Gaithersburgs or PWC -- we traded off house size/quality to get an ok commute).  So they tend to stay in their for off hoods and don't feel like driving in on weekends since they do it all week; we go out to visit, but it doesn't really foster close friendships b/c of distance and infrequency.

Making friends with school families and neighbors has been hard b/c we both WOH.  We see the SAHMs meeting up after school drop off and heading out to coffee, and honestly I get a little jealous -- wish we could find a way to live off DH salary but that ship has sailed at this point.  Meeting up with a mom for lunch is hard b/c my workday is very demanding and I tend to eat lunch at my desk if that.

Realistically, if you are working parents, how did you make good friends when the time you can even get to know people will be on a weekend around everyone's actvities (both families) and of course the pile of chores that pile up during the week?  Going out on a saturday night is ok I guess, but when you hire a babysitter there's a jhard clock running in the background on how long it can go on.

We have invited over families where we like the parents a good deal and would like to get to know them, but haven't really had much reciprocation, and even when we do, it's several weeks later... at this pace a good friendship would take like 3 years to even get an ok foundation!

What are we doing wrong?  One theory is that when we invite families over, perhaps we are too boring!?? Not sure how to fix that either :)

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