Strollerderby : playgroups

Strollerderby Playdate: Hanging With a Messy Loh Life

Madeline Holler — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:33:00 GMT

Just back from a playdate with writer/performer Sandra Tsing Loh and her two kids. Between us, their place is a pit! Clothes everywehere and they had this strange color-coded dishware system, which, I'm pretty sure, kept her off the hook for actually washing them but once a week.

No judgment, though. She's solo household-heading for the next two years. Her husband, a musician and their home's main source of cleaning and cooking, got a temporary gig with Bette Middler's show in Las Vegas. Instead of moving the whole family from Southern California to Sin City, they're doing the long-distance daddy thing. Hence, the pigsty.

Truthfully, I'm not big on clean, neat and tidy either. And, like Loh, I've never had the 50-50 argument with my husband about the chores since my skills (and interest) in that area are totally inferior to his. "If you're going to do something, do it right or don't do it!" is his mantra. Agreed! Here's the mop.

Loh and I both shared a good laugh over Bitch Ph.d's approach to equalizing housework in her home: narrating the wiping of tables, the cooking of dinner, the neatening of floors to the very smallest detail, including passive-aggressive "Oh, I see that X and Y need to be done. Now I shall do X and Y."

Standards. Who needs them! Now pass me my green plate, Sandra, I'm refilling my snacks.

Strollerderby Playdate: A One-Stop Irreverence Bonanza

Madeline Holler — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:17:00 GMT

Some playdates are all about the kids. And that's no fun. Playdates need some grown-up drama, gossip, intrigue, or else why bother showing up week after week?

Which is why I loved today's playdate with The Irreverent Homemaker. Plenty of her friends showed up. They know how to dish. Not a single well-mannered, conventionally polite, minced word in the hours we spent together.

Let's see ... there's the freshly married woman who's obsessed with her ex-boyfriend. (Awkward!) And the one who fell for a trucker. (So sweet -- she knows truckers have a really high rate of hemorrhoids, right?). Also, a kind of preachy piece on politics (there's one in every crowd).

Those are just the added irreverent voices. The Irreverent Homemaker holds her own too. So we get recipes (typical homemaker!), a treatise on giving up the well-manicured lawn (Amen!) and lots of random but relatable ramblings (coffee's almost ready, T.I. Homemaker, hang in there).

The irreverence gets a bit extreme in the blog section, as it's been nearly a year since that's been updated. Come on, TIH, we know you're not beholden to convention, but how's about an update when we meet back at your place next week?

Photo: The Irreverent Homemaker

Strollerderby Playdate: She's Leaving the Group

Madeline Holler — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:32:00 GMT

So this is it. It's over. One of my guilty pleasures is to be no more. My conflicted feelings over loving to read Elisabeth Hasselbeck's parenting journal, curiously over on the Dreft laundry detergent website, is to be no more.

She has written her final entry. And she has bid the blogger playgroup in my mind farewell. Dammit, Elisabeth. I was just starting to like you.

Her final entry is a whirlwind of ideas and activities and subtle clues about the woman who we know so well from Survivor, and that one E! show where she went shopping for cheap clothes, and now as the guardian of all ideas red, right and conservative on ABC's The View. Before she waves good-bye, she confesses that she doesn't easily say "no," bites off more than she can chew, and hasn't written thank-you notes to those who sent her newborn gifts (he's now 3 months old). She tells us she is overwhelmed with preschool applications for her unpotty-trained, binky-loving 3-year-old. Human, are we? I KNEW it!

You're going to miss Elisabeth too, right? It's not just me? I know I could start watching her on The View, but it won't be the same. I've accepted that we'll now only see each other when she's made a gaffe at work. But we had some good times, me and Elisabeth. Some good times.

Strollerderby Playdate: She's a Beauty

Madeline Holler — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 12:18:00 GMT

Here’s what every playgroup needs: a good photographer. Someone who shows up – unbidden – with a camera and a strollerload of talent. She takes pictures, shrinks, crops and uploads only the gorgeous ones – she’s got plenty to choose from -- making sure to load your Inbox only with those shots that star your own child. God, I love that playgroup mom.

Which is why I’m excited about today’s playdate with Chookooloonks. Just thumb through her daily photos. I mean, just a few days ago, she took an absolutely stunning shot of – are you ready? – a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s.

I know, it can’t be. But it's true. Great shot. She takes pictures of flowers, her daughter, herself, stuff from her house (am I making her sound boring? It's not.) Just look at that picture of her coffee mug above. A mug!

Sure, Chookooloonks doesn’t feature any pictures of my kids – that would be weird, because I don’t actually know the blogger. But I’d be glad to meet her, especially if she promises to bring her camera.

Chuck E. Cheese’s! Get out!

Photo: Karen Walrond via chookooloonks

Strollerderby Playdate: The Weekly Playgroup You Love and Hate

Madeline Holler — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:38:00 GMT

When I first became immersed in modern parenting culture, I shuddered at the notion of "playdates" and "playgroups." Why the rotating schedule? Why the detailed organization? Why all the hugging and muffins? Why bother?

I learned quickly, though, that the house becomes a prison, the park gets old and it’s easy to overspend at Target when you’re going there three times a week just to kill time.

I have embraced the playgroup ever since.

Still, I find them to be an imperfect solution, these weekly playgroups. In the same way you can’t choose your own family, playgroups are a crapshoot. You take what you can get. And what you get, I realized (after belonging to thousands in three different cities with two different kids), is pretty much the same. In blog format, I present you with the playgroup prototype:

This is the mom behind every playgroup. She’s the one who reaches out, invites you in, and reminds everyone of the details -- this week’s location, theme and snack provider. She’s awfully busy and not always interesting. But she’s where you start.

Then there’s this mom: the attention hog. Her voice is a little louder than everyone else’s, and there’s a good chance she won’t talk to you. She believes she’s very funny, and she sometimes is. You feel immediately exhausted whenever she shows up and a little let down when she doesn't.

There’s also this mom, the most popular. You don’t know what the big deal is – she looks normal, she sounds normal. Still, you watch her too. You feel the fizzy bubbles of jealousy surface now and again when you see everyone huddled around her, looking after her kid, listening to her vacation stories. You’re relieved each time she mentions her medications. You notice right away when she's gone.

Around this mom, you just feel dumb. Big, stupid, oafish, offensive and dumb. You replay the conversations you have with her over and over in your mind, looking for anything that might have been misconstrued as racist or insensitive or, god forbid, a small-minded display of your white privilege. You kick yourself for mentioning your daughter’s straight, blond hair.

Here’s the mom who talks endlessly about fertility issues. You love the gory details, you nod sympathetically at the masked pain. You feel a little shitty for being pregnant and hope that you'll move again before it becomes obvious.

Of course, there's the one you have a mom crush on. Her stories are tied up nicely in big, tight, raffia bows. But you read between the lines, and you see the rage, the impatience, the lack of control, the self-loathing. She's writing your life, pretty much. But your kids don't come across nearly as deep.

And don’t forget about the dad, the token guy. He shows up once, sits in the corner with his daughter and her juice box and never, ever comes back. Was it the fertility mom's ease in discussing cervical mucus? Maybe the anti-racist's bit about white male domination. Who knows. But you come back, again and again, dreading it before, bitching about it after, scrolling down your bookmarks week after week, getting out, checking in, staying connected.

Male Caregivers Excluded From Dutch Playgroups

Patti — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 13:27:00 GMT

The Netherlands is known for being liberal. So why is that the publicly-run playgroups, designed for toddlers and preschoolers, explicitly exclude fathers and other male caregivers? According to Dutch mama Ingrid Robeyns, it's to accomodate mothers whose cultural practices preclude them from participating in mixed-gender social groups. Robeyns admits that there may be reasons to support such a policy, even as it comes at the expense of men.

I was once involved in a playgroup in another place known for its liberality--San Francisco. Originally comprised of stay-at-home moms and mothers on maternity leave, our group was soon faced with the inevitable: someone invited a stay-at-home dad to join us with his child. And I'm sorry to report, he wasn't well-received. After he attended one of our gatherings, a flurry of emails went out and much hand-wringing and clutching-of-cruelty-free-pearls took place. Suddenly we were divided into three camps: those of us who thought of our group as a safe, woman-only place where we could discuss vaginal discharge, those of us who didn't realize it would be out of line to discuss vaginal discharge in front of a married father who presumably was familiar with the concept, and those of us who must have been in the kitchen getting a coffee refill at the time everyone else was discussing vaginal discharge because they couldn't recall that it ever came up anyway. I don't think any of us had the clarity to see that we were depriving a father of a parenting resource that we were lucky to have found ourselves--unlike the Netherlands, San Franciscans have to find their own parenting groups. Long story short, that dad got the shaft.

As time went by we eventually changed our position on the matter. One mama went back to work and her husband became the primary caregiver, and was welcomed at playgroup with open arms. Another stay-at-home-dad soon followed. But the point, and I do have one, is that we failed that first guy. A bunch of tree-hugging, protest-sign-waving, wishing-we-were-old-enough-to-have-voted-for-the-ERA San Francisco liberals, and what do we do the first chance we get? We tell a stay-at-home-father that he's not welcome to share our parenting experience. And as valuable and supportive as we all were to one another, for that we sucked.