and just when I thought nothing would embarrass me...

I mean seriously, that applebees trip wasn't so much embarrassing as hugely annoying, and frustrating. I'm not the embarrass easily type, never really have been, I feel it's kind of a useless emotion, doesn't change what just happened, doesn't fix the problem. I'm practical like that.

There is always going to be an exception to any rule though, right?

I decided after I picked Will up from preschool yesterday to take advantage of the warm sunny weather and go to the playground before heading home for naptime. In October in New England if you get a nice day you are silly not to take advantage of it. I'm a veteran mom now, I know full well what being in the house all winter long means, caged animals for children and me wanting to run screaming for the hills.

So we go to the playground closest to his school, I should probably fill in here that the preschool I send him too is not in our neighborhood. Its in a nicer neighborhood, in a nicer ymca. So while the playground is packed it isn't people from the same social bracket as my husband and I. It would not be outside of the norm for the adults tending to the children to be nannies and not moms and dads. Picture painted? Ok, we can move on..

I'm chatting up the parents who are also pushing their younger children on the swing while Will plays on the large piece of equipment behind me. All is going well for the first like 15 minutes we are there, until a mom eating a salad on a bench yells, "Is that someones child!?" Yeah you guessed it, I turn around and it is my child, he is standing on the bottom platform of the equipment, and peeing into the sand in the middle of the playground. In full view of ummm everyone. I of course run to my child, explain to him that he can not pee in playgrounds, that he should come to me and tell me if he has to pee, he looks up at me with big, brown innocent eyes and says "But mom, there aren't any bathrooms here" I told him I would have found him one (or found him a nice big private tree..) and tell him not to do it again. He says "Ok mom," and then he reassured me " I don't feel pee-pee's anymore!" Yeah well no kidding kiddo, you already took care of that problem.

I did not however leave or hang my head, I went back to pushing Ben and watched some of the other parents migrate away from me, I mean obviously I have taught my child nothing, and their kid could you know catch it.

Except the only dad there, who was doing his darnedest not to laugh out loud, and said, "Well I guess he isn't shy!" As we were leaving one mom said "how old is he? I said 3 and a half. "She said "This guy is three, is that what I have to look forward too?" Then she told me she thought it was cute!

At least some people understand children.