Apparently the Kids Come Out on Thursday: And take over the patio at Cafe 976

Baby and I headed out for our morning walk where we discovered that babies and kids and parents with huge bags full of snacks and changes of clothes come out to play on Thursdays, around noon time. Unfortunately as baby is mostly used to seeing other adults stare and wave at her when the little girl with the super blonde hair came up and started screaming "BABY! BABY!" at her she was not impressed. Wed' stopped by Cafe 976, a little place that serves great drinks, and has good atmosphere.

Amazing to me that I'm supposed to make friends with these ladies (so they tell me). I'm supposed to join one of those mommy groups and sit around talking about all those mommy tricks they don't tell you about in "What to Expect: The Toddler Years." There seem to be so few of them in PB shouldn't I rush up, introduce myself, start going on and on about just the other day when my baby (genius that she is) stood up ON HER OWN for twenty seconds!

They were all sitting together, and even those that didn't know each other would nod in each others direction every once in a while. I stood quietly in line and listened to my Ipod, thinking about how if Baby fell asleep on our walk I was gonna bust out my book and read it, wherever we were...

As I was day dreaming, super blonde lady (mother of super blonde kid) stopped and smiled at me "she's your first."
"She is."
"Well you're doing an amazing job. You don't even seem to care that she has crumbs all over her face or that her hair is sticking up or that she has a stain on her shirt."
I instantly freaked out, oh crap, Baby is the dirty crazy one on the playground.
"I didn't mean to freak you out, I admire that." She grabbed her child who was running circles around her. "I spent the first couple years with her just being all anal about everything, trying to find the right clothes, the right play group, the right friends, making sure she always looked perfect, cleaning everything all the time. Truth is," her daughter was now on the ground spinning in circles "it doesn't matter all that much."

And she's probably right.

I'm meeting her next Thursday so we can discuss more.

Maybe a Mommy friend...