Tag: play area madness

Wanna Get Together? No, not really.

So, a few weeks ago, I took the girls to the play area at the mallwhere we met this mom and her two girls. Contrary to popular belief, making friends is not something I do with ease. I have serious social ineptitude and would much prefer to jump from “Hi, I’m Hilary with one L” to “Thanks for having us! Let’s get together again soon!”. And if I could have someone perform background checks, plan and execute the playdate, well, shoot, I’d have it made.

Just as with dating, checking out a new mom and her brood can be an overwhelming exercise. You size eachother up. You’re checking her out, she’s checking you out. You scope out her clothes and what kind of stroller she’s rolling and vice versa. She wants to know if you frequent the White Rabbit or strictly mall shop, if your kids take Suzuki violin, and whether or not you summer on the Vineyard or in Corolla. You want to know if she’s got Janie and Jack’s spring catalog on her coffee table, if her au pair is from Brazil or Brussels, and whether or not they belong to the YMCA or One Life Fitness. You casually refer to some celebrity gossip you caught on CNN to feel out whether or not you can admit to being an US Weekly Junkie. She name drops some of the other mom groups to which she has checked out to see where your allegiances lie. You ask her where she went to school. She asks you what your husband does. Back and forth, back and forth. The whole thing is a pre-screen to see if either of you even want to keep talking to each other let alone offer up any other vital stats, like your name.

This woman, let’s call her Pam, and her kids pass another 30 minutes of so with us at the play area before we have to head out. Her two girls are slightly younger than Mo and Co, but all of the girls have gotten along famously. I tell Pam that it had been nice talking with her, round up my girls and am about to head out when she says, “Hey, you seem really normal and cool. I was wondering if I could give you my number so we could get the girls together some time. We’ve been here about 3 years and I haven’t really met anyone that we really would want to hang out with.“

Wow. Normal and cool? She really knows how to flatter a girl.

She seemed nice enough, flattered me just the right amount without seeming pushy or stalker-ish. Her girls were cute and played nicely with Mo and Co. While I enjoyed talking with her that morning, I wasn’t really sure that we had a future much beyond the play area. God, that sounds terribly tacky, but c’mon, you know when a potential relationship candidate (male/female/social/business/romantic or otherwise) is not going to work out. I once invited a mom and daughter to our playgroup purely based on the fact that I had enjoyed their company. Long story short, their inclusion in that one get together was a disaster — the daughter was a grabby-non-sharing-whiny-biter and the mom was a one-upping-braggart. Yadda, yadda, yadda, I almost got kicked out of the playgroup for not having not properly vetted them.

Maybe I just don’t know how to say “No”. Maybe I’m a sucker. Maybe I’m too nice (I was never good at giving out fake numbers). Whatever the case, I found myself exchanging information with Pam.

Fast forward two weeks and several exchanges of phone tag. Just when I figure that we’ve both made an effort without any success, I actually answer the phone when she calls asking to get together.

Okay, why not? Well, here’s why — trying to find a mutually agreed upon day, time, and activity is damn near impossible. Her kids nap from 12 to 2p, mine “nap” from 2 to 4p. We live in Norfolk, they live in Chesapeake, about 20 plus minutes away. We hem and haw, we finally pick a date and when it comes to finalizing the particulars, it turns into some serious wheeling and dealing.

I suggest a lunch time playdate. She suggests an after nap playdate. I suggest meeting halfway at the mall for lunch at noon with some time at the play area. She offers up her house, a homemade lunch and some playtime with her girls at 1:30p. My kids get out of school at noon. It takes 20 minutes to get to Chesapeake — what am I going to do for 90 minutes? What else ya got?

Alright, how are we going to make this work? I toss out an afternoon playdate at her house, we’ll bring our own lunch, and we’ll come at 12:30. I need that 2 to 4p window so that I can have some sort of smirk smile on my face when DH comes home. You know, right after I slap on my apron, pearls, lipstick and heels and take the pot roast out of the oven.

I’m really not trying to bend on this one, because I know several moms (none of you, dear readers, of course) that flatly refuse to leave their homes if an excursion falls within the nap time window. When I was a new mom, I definitely fell into that camp and probably would have slapped your face if you said there’d come a time when I’d just toss the girls into the car and say, “Nap time be, doggoned!” I suck when it comes to bluffing and I don’t want to flat out lie in order to make this work in my favor. We all know lies will catch up with you with a quickness — look at the Heene’s.

I’m just not really feeling this woman enough to bend to her rules and evidently the feeling is mutual. Or the lack of feeling is mutual. Or whatever. There’s a playdate on the books, but as the date nears, I’m starting to wonder if this is really going to happen. I mean, if the process of even planning to get together is a drain, how well can the actual experience be?

I think I *koff*koff* feel a cold coming on.

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IN: ON: January 27, 2010 TAGS: , BY: Hilary
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People Watching at the Play Area

Since the temperature has been steadily falling the past few days, I’m trying to find more after-school activities for the girls that allow us to be in a climate controlled environment. Oh, and I don’t want to have to pay for it. Two kids plus an adult at one those inflatable playplaces or Chuck E. Cheese? We’re in a recession people! Plus with all of the fervor over H1N1? I won’t even go into that.
So, how have we been passing the time? We go visit my parents. We meet our friends for lunch and trade playdates at our respective houses. We go to the library. As a matter of fact, we’ve been to the library so many times in the past two weeks, when we went in on Wednesday, Mo and Co just grabbed a cart and started re-shelving some books.
Yesterday, I decided that they needed to run around a little bit, but the wind was biting just a bit too hard. I hate to admit it, but I’ve totally lost my New England edge. The thermometer drops below 65 and I’m breaking out thermal underwear and Perfomance Fleeces. I even went so far as to put two throw blankets in the dryer for 20 minutes and then drape them over the kitchen chairs so that the girls could be wrapped up in that fresh-from-the-dryer-warmth while they had breakfast. My mom once said, “Never start something you don’t plan on doing every single day” (I was a young newlywed at the time, so you can take your pick on activities to which she was referring — wink, wink, nudge, nudge). I had no idea fulfilling a daily request for “warm blankets” would be one of those things.
But as I was saying, the weather has cooled and we’re looking for some things to do. Enter the play area at the mall. Despite the H1N1 pandemonium of late, I took my chances and relied heavily on strength of daily vitamins, slatherings of Purell, and our seasonal flu vaccines. Besides, we haven’t been to the play area in a while. Probably not since that iPhone wielding mom who just watched as her kid face-planted into the floor (ahhh, good times). Our recent trip certainly didn’t disappoint.
First of all, they have since installed these pressurized gates on both of the entrances into the play area. I think it’s to keep the kids in, but it works more to keep people out because every single person that rolled up on those gates wrangled with it for like five minutes before someone inside the play area yelled, “You have to push it! You have to push it!” I saw one frustrated dad look around several times like he was waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out from behind the Starbucks and yell, “Dude, we totally go you!” After several ineffective attempts to open the gate, another patience-impaired parent tossed in her kid and her stroller. She then channelled Shawn Johnson and vaulted over it. Her execution score was low, but that was because she bobbled her landing.
We get into the play area and Mo and Co take off, blending into the mix of toddlers and pre–schoolers leaping off of things and sliding down others. I sit back, keeping one eye on my girls and another on the steady influx of moms, dads, and caregivers that begin to populate the place.
One mom comes lurching into the play area, straddling her child’s body as she holds him by the wrists and drags him across the ground. Seriously. She was dragging him. By the wrists. Across the ground. Are you kidding me?! At first I thought maybe he had some kind of paralysis of the legs because — oh yeah, he was being dragged!
He wasn’t crying or yelling or anything. He had this placid look on his face like, “Yeah, this is how I do.” The mom deposited him in front of some equipment like a retriever depositing some slippers in front of their master. She then pulled off his shoes and his coat while he laid face down on the floor. And he just laid there, chillin‘, even as several kids vaulted over him, as they ran laps around the perimeter.
He eventually got up, though I didn’t see where or when because Donatella Versace came in with Dolce by the hand and Gabanna in the stroller. Oh, can I tell you?! Actually, I misspoke. Donatella’s breasts came in first, followed by her lips, and then the rest of her. I mean, it’s Friday afternoon in Norfolk and this broad is wearing painted on jeans, Gucci stiletto boots, and a white tee shirt so tight, her nipples looked at me and whispered, “Help. . .us. . .can’t. . .breathe. . .”
She reached into her BeDazzled Coach bag made of some animal that probably wasn’t on the ark and promptly got on her BeDazzled cell phone. Quelle surprise! Little Dolce in his toddler Ed Hardy Shirt and 7 for all mankind Jeans hopped up on a climber and started yelling, “Mom! Mom! Look at me!” Donatella waved a BeDazzled hand at him and kept on talking. “Mom! Mom! Look at me!” Dolce persisted.
Well, I looked, and do you know this little joker proceeded to dance on top of that climber like he was Michael Jackson on the roof of a car in front of a courthouse! At first I thought he was having a grand mal seizure, what with all his popping and locking, but then when he grabbed his crotch? Oh my.
I cast my eyes around to do a check for Mo and Co and I spotted their respective Afro puffs bobbing up and down in between various children and equipment. And then, in my line of sight strode another woman, dragging a prone child by the wrist across the floor. Again with the wrist?! I suppose that was all she could manage because there was squirming infant trying to launch itself out of her compromised grasp.
Just behind her, a dad had his child by the wrist and ankle and began whirling himself around in a circle. He looked like a mast and the kid looked like an unfurled sail. And the mom?! She was standing off to the side with her hands over her mouth looking aghast. Seriously, lady? Stop that madness (yes, I know, I’m such a hypocrite). I was just waiting for the “pop” and the squeal that comes with dislocated bones. But really? If you are going to do your best Gordeeva and Grinkov impression, the local mall probably isn’t the best place to do it.
After that little display, I figured it was time to give the girls a 5 minute departure warning. When it was time to leave, I was braced for the post-lunch/pre-nap meltdowns. The girls put on their shoes and coats. Co got in the stroller and Mo buckled her in. They got their palms filled with hand sanitizer and rubbed their mitts together as we made it to the car. In record time, we were out of the lot, back to the house and into the bed for naps. And I didn’t even have to drag them by the wrists to do it.

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IN: ON: November 9, 2009 TAGS: , , BY: Hilary
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Rumble at the Play Area

Well, not exactly, but it sure came close. I took Mo and Co to the play area at the local mall the other day in order to satisfy several needs at once: My need to return and re-purchase items, their need to run around and all of our need to get out of the heat. The play area has had a face-lift in the last few months, but the erstwhile security guards are still more concerned with preventing moms from bringing in their ristretto tall non-fat extra-hot no-whip half-sweet sugar-free gingerbread latte from Starbucks than keeping out children with facial hair and acne.

Gone is the picnic theme from when we we first started going to this play area. Gone, too are giant hot dog, cupcake, and slice of watermelon. The whole area has become Looney Toon/Port Norfolk amalgamation. Bugs Bunny and pals feature prominently over the playscape, which also includes a container ship, freight trains, cargo boxes, and a huge tug boat. And the whole joint has motion detecting sound elements so that once a child’s foot runs past the boat, you get honest to goodness tug boat sounds. In the beginning, there were a few moms who scratched their heads between covert sips of lattes, wondering, “Good gracious, will that infernal fog horn never end?!” — yeah, sorry ladies.

Anyway, we’re at the play area. The girls are playing amidst the throng of other children whose mother’s think like me and I am pinching grapes from my ziploc bag in my purse into my mouth out of the eyeline of the security guard. We’ve been here for a good while and I’m really enjoying that both Mo and Co are old enough to play together and to play independently. I’m not saying I can just sit back and re-read “Twilight” while the run around, but I don’t have to be shadowing them as they meander here, there, and everywhere.

I see this one little girl, a toddler really, atop one of those climbers shaped like a hybrid freight train. The rear of the train flattens out into a slide ramp and as she makes her way towards it, I know exactly what is about to happen. Off balance, unstable toddler feet, lots of other kids weaving in and out — little girl takes a faceplant on the slide. Adding insult to injury — she doesn’t slide down, just kind of bounces on her face onto the floor. And lays there, crying. I start looking around wondering whose kid this is because clearly she’s hurt and scared. Just as I start to get up, this woman, who has some kind of genetic abnormality where her Apple iPhone has been fused onto her ear and shoulder, strolls on over, hoists the girl up under her armpit and walks away to sit back down. Okayyyyyyyyy. I mean, could you put the phone down for a second and make sure your kid’s facial features are in the same place you last left them?

Fast forward about 15 minutes. Mo is playing with some little girl on this climber shaped to look like Daffy Duck rowing a crate towards the port. The girl is standing on Daffy’s chest, Mo is laying on her stomach atop the crate and the conversation is involving pirates, mermaids, and who knows how to use the toilet all by themselves. Co, desperate to be where the action is, starts to insert herself onto the boat. The little girl, oblivious to the relationship between Mo and Co, begins to tell Co, “No, you can’t be on here. No, you can’t play here. No. No.” Now, I don’t like it when Mo does that to Co and vice-versa, and I doubly don’t like it when some little knock-kneed, buck-toothed, five year old waif does it to either of them. Still, I can’t get all mama bear up in here, so I call out to Mo, “Hey, Mo! You tell that girl that Co can play with you guys!” to which she says, “OK” and then resumes her position on the crate. Gee, thanks. And so for the next minute or two, there is this conversation dance of sorts between the girl saying no, Co saying yes, me calling Mo for reinforcements, and Mo just saying, “OK“.

Finally, Co decides enough is enough and really starts to maneuver her way into the boat. Ol‘ girl ain’t havin‘ that and in her infinite five year old wisdom, begins to pick Co up under her armpits to hoist her off of the boat. OH HAYLE NO. I couldn’t have been more than six to eight feet away from this, but I covered that ground in about 2 steps.

“Excuse me!” I said in my best-Homey-don’t-play-that-voice, crossing over to the boat. “Do not pick her up. Put her down. Now, ” and I gave her the stink eye so bad, her little hands just released Co and hung in the air, unsure of what they were and what they should be doing.

Now, a mom can’t roll up on somone else’s child like that without the offending child’s mother sensing a disturbance in the force. Sure enough, a voice calls out, “Emma (or you can insert your own overly popular name here)!” and head cocked to the side, maintaining proper shoulder to iPhone to ear connectivity, here comes cell phone mom from the faceplant incident. It was clear that this girl was her daughter — not only did they look alike, but the toddler did call her “mom”. Still, all I could do was look at this woman and wonder, who do you have on the phone that is so important, you can’t even pocket that thing to tend to your children? I mean, just tell the person, “Hey, let me call you right back.” What about a “Hang on a sec!” — you don’t even have to hang up. The woman didn’t even look in my direction, barely looked at her kid, but I’d like to think her mumbled, “Sorry about that,” was directed at me and not to the conversationalist on the other end of the phone.

I felt myself getting all Bruce Banner right in the play area, ready to unload an acerbic diatribe on her ass, but the feeling was short-lived. Mo decided she needed to use the potty — now. And when you gotta go, you gotta go. So, we went.

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IN: ON: August 5, 2009 TAGS: , , , BY: Hilary
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