Mom and Baby Activities Are Not My Style

I'm up at 3am reading mommy-themed articles because I'm starving. All I have for snacking is chocolate cake and a Picnic bar. I don't really want to eat those right now and go back to bed.


Anyway, one article is about fun things to do for yourself if you have an hour free. Her idea of a good time? Wash the car or play "grocery tourist," where you wander around an ethnic grocery store and pretend you're in a different country. For real?! You know what I think most normal moms do when they have one hour to themselves? Take a shower or eat.

Now this one is whining about how she couldn't take her "very well-behaved baby" to the spa with her. I say suck it up.
No doubt, having a baby kills your life as you knew it before. And you can have a lovely baby, who is very well-behaved in pubic most of the time and who you love being with (I do!) but that doesn't mean everyone else shares your joy. When I go to the spa, I'm there almost specifically to get away from my baby. I go and I try *very hard* NOT to think about him constantly (which is very difficult). I want to see adults, I want to talk to adults - I don't want to see other kids. Quite frankly, I don't give a shit about most other people's babies, so I really wouldn't care to see them at the spa.
I'll admit not being able to go when I want to has made scheduling difficult (and reduced me to tears on one occasion). I would be happy to take him along with me to a spa that I knew welcomed us (either at specific times or a specific spa), but that wouldn't be the case 100% of the time, so the times I want to go alone, I want to be child-free. And really, as a mom - hell, as a person - you have to get used to the fact that the majority of the world functions in such a way that everyone says they love kids, but kids are rarely welcomed anywhere. Kids are seen as a means to an end to continue our race - people will put up with them for very short time frames, but no one seems to really like them in public. So you have to adjust to that.

And while I'm on that rant, I'm a little tired of mom-and-baby activities. Yes, they have a good purpose, but just because I'm a mom, does not mean I want to spend all my free time with my baby or even other babies. Like Movies for Moms (which went bankrupt in Montreal, by the way) - first off, they showed lame-ass movies (what makes people think moms want to see shitty movies?) Two, do you know how hard it is to watch a movie with a baby? It's freaking impossible without a pause button. And three, why would I want to be stuck in a room with a bunch of other babies? The fact I have a baby does not mean I like babies. I like *my* baby. And someone, some business person, needs to get on board with that and stop grouping us all together all the time like one big happy family with tons in common. The conversation for me does not go, "hey, my baby poops." "Oh, so does mine!" "Great, let's be friends and hang out all the time!"

You know what I would like? Aside from a babysitter, that is...an adult with time free in the day to hang out with, who wouldn't mind hanging around with me and my baby. That's what they need to create - a group of people who don't mind babies and who will spend time with mommies. They will not make the baby the focus and be totally patient with the fact everything take 500 times longer to do with a baby in tow. And then, when I want to go to sleep, I can tell them to leave...or clean my house for me. Does such a person exist? Perhaps, but probably not without payment. Or maybe that's just a husband on the weekend.