Play-doh!

As I said before, I don't do play dates, playgroups and have an overwhelming fear of too much regularity at one playground. This may come as a shock to many, particularly those who always say to me, "why don't you and the Captain join a class or something? You'll meet people. It will be fun!" Humbug. I know what fun is and unless I’m playing scrabble or seeing a play, the word play shouldn’t even be in the equation.

Captain Kid can be a really remarkable child. Naturally he's mine, so he's remarkable, but honestly, there are some kick ass awesome things about the Captain. So as much as I spend this blog grumbling, I feel I should focus on the positives. Sort of like a performance review of the Captain (Here are the areas I feel you’ve excelled as a kid…yet, there are many areas in which I feel you could improve…). So here they are, in no particular order, my favorite things about Captain Kid:

1. He was sleeping through the night at 6 weeks and has rarely given me a bad night’s sleep since;
2. He's always been rather precocious. Whether walking (9-1/2 months), eating grown up food, sorting by shapes (around 15 months) or climbing stairs he's always taking things on a little early and with full force; you have to admire his resourcefulness;
3. He's a hugger. Me, Dad, random stranger's in the park, small animals, trees. You name it he's hugged it;
4. He has a healthy fear of plants. Huh? I assure you, particularly around Christmas, a healthy fear of plants is not a bad thing; and
5. The funniest noises come out of him. Sort of those intangible things that you have to be there for, but among his best impersonations are Mediocre Mama yelling and Marlon Brando.

So I've done it? Woo hoo. I love my kid, I'm a good Mama. La dee da, la dee da.


Now I dish.

The basic reason I don't do play dates, playgroups and vary up my playgrounds is that I'm deathly afraid of being mortified. The Captain can't sit still to save his life. The more open the space, the more likely he'll go nuts. The smaller the space, the more bored he gets. He pushes ahead of other kids at the park. If a child won't back away from the steps up to the slide, he'll step on the other child to get passed. He runs away, all the time, to the street or to the hills. We tried one of those harness things; he just sort of dangles off the end of it like a worm on a hook. He steals toys; he throws tantrums when you take the items away. He steals food. He steals mothers from unsuspecting kids and then gets shoved for being so impertinent.

But there’s another, and possibly more substantive reason why I don’t do play dates, playgroups and vary up my playgrounds. I don’t like other mothers! Oh, don’t get me wrong, I like my friends who already are mothers or who are future mothers. And I certainly don’t mind meeting women independent of having kids, hitting it off and then saying, oh goodie, we both have kids…let’s disco. But I have a block against forming a friendship with other women simply on the basis of having kids. I mean, really, what do we have in common? We both have kids? Bullshit, anyone can have a kid. That’s not a commonality, that’s a basic life function. Sort of like saying I’ll get along with another woman because we both have a nose and two eyes.

Example. I’ll never forget this one time I was studying for one of my law classes; I decided to take a friend to one of our local coffee bars for a little liquid brain power. Whilst there, a mommy group decided to pop in. I eavesdropped on this group (it was sort of hard not to) and for 15 minutes they discussed bleeding nipples. Now I had no problem with loudly discussing bleeding nipples in a cafe (let’s face it, I passed “inappropriate” sometime between getting pregnant and starting this blog), but to me I just couldn’t fathom paying a group to meet and discuss the status of my nipples. My nipples, despite evidence to the contrary, are not what I am about.

The end result is that I’ve made a small handful of friends while in Spain versus the mass mother-entourage I see some of these women with at the playground (thus, my fear of spending too much time at the same playgrounds). It does seem, in a sense, a bit like high school because Momtourage seems very good at putting up a road block to any Mama, particularly a Mediocre Mama, who is outside of the social schema. Hence, I feel this big around Momtourage and it would seem that when Momtourage's toddler thumps the Captain, there is very little intervention.

Maybe that’s the other thing that I don’t like about the play dates, playgroups and playgrounds…there’s too much damn pressure. All it takes is one bad move by CK or by their children and too soft a hand in correcting behavior for it all to go to hell. Maybe it’s that I feel judged (and subsequently I judge) by Momtourage.

And let’s face it, the thought of loosening up and joining in on play dates, playgroups or the Momtourage bandwagon is akin to discussing my bleeding nipples because I’ve noticed that Momtourage has nipples too…