Choose Your Playground Battles Wisely

Since Spring has finally arrived here, we have gotten in a nice groove of an early dinner and then some time in our neighbourhood park before bath and bedtime. It is good for all three of us, Max burns off some energy and DH and I get some time outside and not staring at our respective computer screens.

Now this is the first Spring that Max is big enough to really enjoy the whole park and he loves it. Going down slides, the swings, playing in the sand you name it he goes crazy for it.

Since the weather is so nice the park is super crowded and that means tons of kids who are still learning the meaning of personal space or waiting their turn. So Max, was playing in the sand and another kid takes his shovel. Luckily Max had more than one so he kind of gave the kid an odd look while I trilled " That's ok Max, you can share." Then the kid takes another one of his toys., and another, and another and so on. I look around for this kid's parents and I see a dad pecking away at his blackberry.

Finally I say firmly to the toy stealer/other child "Now, now we have to share" and take 1/2 the toys (I think I was being uber-nice considering the situation) and give them to Max. Does this kid not start screaming bloody murder which finally makes this dad lift his head from his Blackberry, come over and huffily say "What the F*** (no lie) is going on?"

Ok so first my head exploded by being sworn at by a stranger and then I calmly said "First, easy with the swearing in a park full of kids and second your kid is stealing my kids toys" He looked at me with a strange look and said "Kids need to work things about by themselves"

Umm, these are toddlers they have the conflict resolution skills of a 6 month old puppy. Here is how I think Max's brain works ; "Hey, what's that? It's shiny and moves, I'm getting it, what no I want it, what do you mean no?, WHAAAAAAA"

So in response to this father I simply said "In our house we share, and since you were too busy texting to step in and take control of the situation, if you had a problem with that you should be paying attention to your kid in the park"

So the dad then realized the silence in the park meant everyone was waiting for his response and got all huffy and left, muttering "It's a park, kids should get to do what they want" or something like that. I immediately felt like a helicopter mom and had visions of my going with Max on dates and his first job interviews.

So tell me readers, was what I did a classic helicopter mom move Max is now doomed to live with me forever or did I handle the situation correctly?

The Question

So this weekend, I finally got asked the question I have been dreading for 5 months.

I was at a friend's party and I got the "So what do you do?" question. The answer used to be easy "Well I am a director at an ad agency blah, blah, blah" I would rattle off the name of my agency and the clients I worked for, wait for the usual, suitably impressed response and move on. Now the question is much more loaded "What do I do?"

Well I take care of a crazy, uber-active 2 year old, trying to make sure he doesn't turn into a serial killer, or wife abuser. I help my husband in his business, I mean someone has to make money around here.. :P and I am in the midst of launching my own business all while trying to maintain a semi-clean home and make edible dinner creations. How does one fit that into a witty one liner remark at a dinner party?

The answer is you don't or at least I didn't know how to and merely mumbled "Well, you know I am taking some time to take care of Max..." and slunk away back to the bar. What the hell kind of answer was that? Why was I so ashamed of taking this detour off the corporate ladder and do the hardest thing I have ever done in my whole life? I feel like I became the exact kind of woman I used to judge. The stereotypical career woman who couldn't hack the big leagues once they became a mom. Well the jokes on me, who would have thunk I would become one of them?

I have been thinking about this all weekend and I still don't have an answer. On the one hand, the Stay at Home mom is revered by society as the solution to all the ills in children but the answer I got in return at the party was a glazed-eyed "Great, great, most important job in the world.." as they scanned the room for someone more interesting-slash-important-slash helpful to their career.

Why is the choice we make never the right one?

Why are working moms made to feel that they are short-changing their children while Stay at Home moms feel like they "wasted" their education and "What kind of example are you setting for your sons & daughters anyways?"

My short answer to this if Max were to ask is that I want to show him that you only get to live once and that you should live with no regrets and based on your rules not somebody else's and that being happy is always more important than being rich.

I think that's enough for now, right? I mean he is only 2. Perhaps we should focus on the difference between a circle and a square for now and save the hard stuff for say 4 years old.

Number 1

So this is my first post. Not a big deal to most but as blog reading addict, I always love to read people first posts only after I am way into their blog. I find it so amazing to see how people have grown and changed in their blog.

I feel the same way when I read a novel, and if it gets to be stressful I go ahead and read the last page because I like to know that it all ends up being ok.

So I'm going cheat a little and go back to the reason why this blog is called 'Stranded in the Suburbs' and not 'Living large in Paris with my Italian Lover'

The reason is this;


Or rather the idea of him, you see no matter what dreams I had for my life, he was always there. It was never a question of if I would have a baby but when which is strange because I have no younger siblings, never babysat or wanted to but I knew that I was going to be a mother.

So I went through high school & university finding tons of Mr. Wrongs, finally finding my Mr. Right, dating, practically forcing him to marry me (we'll save that story for another day) starting a a fancy-shmancy career and finding I was actually pretty kick-ass at it and settling into the suburbs.

So Mr. Right and I settled into newlywed life full of trips to Home Depot, leisurely brunches and other smug married activities. Once we finally decided to ditch the protection and start planning I assumed that we would take a couple of months to get pregnant and bam instant family. I bet you can see where this is going right?

Months passed and......nothing. I combed message boards and the internet looking for a solution, ordered anything that seemed remotely helpful, peed on countless ovulation strips, ate tons of pineapple (before ovulation only!) avoided yams, assumed extremely unattractive positions after sex, threw away all of Mr. Right's briefs, even checked my cervical mucous daily (yes it is as gross as it sounds) and .......nothing.

Finally we visited the fertility clinic where I subjected myself to countless "trans-vaginal examinations" at 6am no less administered by well-meaning yet brutally efficient eastern European Ultrasound techs. I often left these appointments feeling oddly like I had just had a very bad date where one of the top fertility doctors in the country told us that I had a "hostile" cervix.

Hostile? Well of course it's hostile it has spent the past 20 years trying to keep sperm away from my uterus so that I could continue to sip martinis and climb the corporate ladder! The doctor then explained that we could ambush my cervix and get all the little Mr. Right's into my uterus. So we forked over our hard earned money and trans-vagd my way into stirrups discussing the MD's forthcoming Argentinean vacation while my DH slunk his way home after making a deposit but I digress.

Thankfully it worked and 41.5 weeks later I found myself the tired, 4th degree torn mother of a 9lb 1 oz baby boy Max who according to the nurses "had the perfect C-section slash in the 99th percentile for circumference head" yet which would have been great but I DIDN'T HAVE A C-SECTION! You know what I am getting at right?

So motherhood hit me like a ton of bricks and after a year spent in the horrible throes of PPD I returned to work to find that my employer assumed that I had pushed my brain and not a baby out of my vagina. I was given a lower profile position in favour of a man and I was hell-bent on proving that having a baby wouldn't slow me down.....well truthfully for me it did I left my heart and brain at home with Max and after 9 months of doing laundry at midnight, conference calls in the car, & daycare dashes I walked into my boss' office and.....quit.

So now it has been 3 months since that day and I am still trying to decide if it was the best thing that has ever happened to me or the biggest mistake of my life.

This blog will be my poor womans therapy/journal as I try to figure out what I am going to do for the rest of my life and make sure Max doesn't hate me in the process.

So if anyone is out there, please let me know that it will all be ok?

As John Lennon said "Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay it's not the end"

Right? Right.