I threw in that part about Whole Foods so I wouldn't be tempted to do a whole entire ranty post about it

Today, for the very first time, I took both kids to the pool ALL BY MYSELF. (I will hold while you applaud.)

Asher is much more confident in the water after two weeks of swim class, and in turn, that makes me much more confident about letting him do whatever the heck he wants to do while we're all at the baby pool so I can keep all my eyeballs on Lucy, the child who makes swimming look suspiciously like drowning. I swear, I turned around for three seconds to pacify Asher's escalating pleas for me to WATCH THIS, MAMA (he was attempting to splash a bug out of the pool, FASCINATING) and when I turned back around, she had already climbed out of the pool and was in the midst of throwing herself off the side. DEATH WISH. I'd say she went fully under the water about 15 times during the course of the 90 minutes we were there. Eighty percent of the time she was able to turn herself over underwater and stand up without so much as a sputter but the other 20 percent... well, frankly, the other 20 percent of the times made me feel like we should have an oxygen tank at the ready, right by the side of the pool, WITH TWO MASKS because MY GOD the chest-crushing anxiety that knocks the wind right out of you when a face-down toddler catches the corner of your eye.

The ice cream truck pulled up right about the time I needed to get everybody out of the water so I could quit CONCENTRATING so darned much. What happened to the RELAXING part of pool-going? Where is the part of the pool where I read a book and everyone frolics safely and happily on their own? I suppose maybe that happens when your kid stops ingesting enough pool water to fill a reservoir? (We've got A WAYS TO GO.) Anyway, the kids had already HAD ice cream today (it's summer, SHUT UP) but they'd never had ice cream from an ice cream truck and ice cream trucks are Official Rites of Childhood Passage so I got some cash from my bag and then we gathered up all of our pool toys, put them in our grossly overpriced plastic Hello Kitty bucket and put it on our chair next to our towels and bags.

You guys, I wish you could have seen my child standing there; facing off with the Ice Cream Truck Menu. This is a child who eats ice cream. Plain ice cream. SIMPLE ice cream. (SALE ice cream, I also feel I should mention.) Not ice cream NOVELTIES. He wants vanilla, and he wants it in a cone or a cup. The end. And he doesn't even want very much! He had no earthly idea why he was staring at a bunch of pictures of things like Scooby-Doo and Spongebob and popsicle-shaped objects with, wait, what is that – not six layers of flavors, are you kidding me? Where is the narrow, plain, HFCS cherry popsicle of which we happen to be fond? WHERE IS THE PLAIN WHITE ICE CREAM? And why are all these other kids pushing and shoving and CLAMORING for such things? They don't even have VANILLA AT THIS STUPID ICE CREAM TRUCK, who eats ice cream shaped like a CARTOON DOG'S HEAD FOR PETE'S SAKE.

I ended up buying three Breyers Strawberry Fruit Bars. THIS WAS A COLOSSAL MISTAKE. First of all, these things were huge. They each weighed about three pounds and there was only about half an inch of popsicle stick to hold on to which meant that neither child could hold onto them without having to TOUCH the sticky fruit bar so I had to bite off the bottom half of each bar and spit it onto the grass (it was just too much to eat) (also CLASSY) and Lucy spent her time alternately licking hers and pointing to the pieces I had spit out and announcing “UH OH” and Asher almost fell over dead when it started melting and dripping onto his legs and by the time we were finished, the popsicles looked almost exactly as they had when we bought them, save for the chunks I bit off the bottom. Everyone's legs were covered in sticky syrup and local bees were starting to get kind of interested in our situation and so we threw those suckers away and went back inside. I am going to pretend I don't hear the ice cream truck the next time it pulls up, I PROMISE YOU THAT. (Felt kind of bad for the kid whose grandma bought her a Scooby-Doo ice cream, as it STAINED HER FACE BROWN.)

Anyway, when we got back to our chair (and this situation is the whole reason I planned on writing this post in the first place), I saw that our bucket of toys had been upended in the pool. Everything was floating this way and that and one of our Prized Possessions (a plastic squirting Thomas train that I realize I likely shouldn't have brought in the first place) was altogether MISSING.

Ok, so beyond my stupidity in bringing a favorite toy to a pool, WHAT THE HECK. If your kid is old enough to be tooling around the pool by themselves, and you aren't worried about them falling in and drowning and therefore let them wander at will, SURELY they are also old enough to know not to touch other people's property? And if you were there WITH your kids, tell me why you didn't see them taking other people's stuff and ABSCONDING WITH IT? I could totally understand if we had left our stuff out on the side of the pool and kids saw it and wanted to play with it. No big deal – we try to share our toys when we're there, and we kind of expect the same from others. If my kids see something that they want to play with that isn't theirs, I make sure that we ask permission. It's polite, it's respectful. I expect the same, most of the time. But in this case, in order to prevent the loss of some of our things, I picked them up and put them somewhere I considered “safe.” So someone just wandered over, thought our stuff looked fun, and took it. I was ticked; mostly because I thought this was irresponsible on some parent's part: either your kid has no idea about appropriate boundaries, or YOU don't. And hey, guess what? MY STUFF ISN'T YOUR STUFF. Especially if I'm not around to reiterate that.

I thought my heart would break when I had to tell Asher that I didn't know where his Thomas was and that we would just have to come back the next day and see if anyone turned it in. He was sad, after all, I'd just bought it a week or so before and he loves playing with it in the bathtub. (I know, IDIOT for bringing it out of the house in the first place.) I finally ended up telling him that I'd get him another. We made it out to the parking lot and LO AND BEHOLD, there was Thomas, sitting on the curb where the ice cream truck had been. Which was worse, because I felt like that meant some little kid had carried it out there with him, and instead of his mom NOTICING and demanding that he take it back to where he found it, he just abandoned it on the curb in exchange for a Scooby-Doo novelty ice cream, leaving another child POTENTIALLY BROKENHEARTED. I am BEYOND disappointed, Pool Parents of My Town.

Also, while I'm at it: I am asking these same parents (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) to drop their snooty Whole Foods Charade because OMG I saw that blue frozen stuff you bought off a truck and let your kid eat for a snack and it had a GUMBALL at the bottom of it. LESS THAN ORGANIC, me thinks.

Comments

[craftyashley]

Seriously. I met a snooty mom who fed her kids "organic" Spaghetti O's. ORGANIC. So it must be good for them, then? But no, the carrot sticks my kids have are not "organic." I shop at Smith's.

And wow that someone would let their kid play with other's toys- so disrespectful!

[Megan]

Heh. I'm more of a Trader Joe's type of gal, but dangit, I LOVES me some of that neon-blue Jello. I eat so much, it turns my tongue blue. AND I give my daughter a big bowl of it, too.

[Cathy]

Just curious--is it possible that Asher carried it with him to the truck, and set it down and forgot about it in the confusion of the fancy ice cream treats?

But either way, there's no reason for your things to be strewn across the pool. I HATE parents who don't watch their kids in public places. It's like they think, Oh, everyone here has kids, so all the kids can just run amok and do what they want.

[Manda]

Friend? I LOVE YOU. You just rip words right out of my mouth on the regular. I am very prone to scolding kids at the playground these days which makes me feel like an ass. But you know what, 8 year old boy who is unattended and just knocked my less-than-2-year-old over and stole the ball she was playing with at the damn under-5 TOT PARK? You deserved it.

[Life of a Doctor's Wife]

You know, I often witness unfathomable behavior and wonder, "How is it that adults get to be so entitled/thoughtless/jerkwadish?"

And I think it really does go back to the parents. I mean, how can you expect your child to grow up and be a good person if you, yourself, are not a good person?

So glad that the Thomas was found. But man - your whole experience makes me so irritated. Just picturing poor Asher wondering where his Thomas went... makes my heart break a little. What is wrong with some people?!?!

(Okay, so I am not a parent so probably should have no opinion on this. But I do have one.)

(And also, I am sorry you are being hard on yourself. Because YOU are a good person, and it sucks that you have to alter your normal behavior - ie, bringing Thomas along - in anticipation of future asshats. You didn't do anything wrong. Not thinking the worst of people is a virtue, not a flaw.)

[Pieces of a Sometimes Extraordinary Life]

Oh, the vitriol! (I love it, girl. You tell them!) I'd suggest making yourself feel better by remembering that those kids will inevitably be headed to a juvenile detention center within ten years, and their parents will be paying the price for it, repenting their lackadaisical parenting style...

(Okay, um, the last two comments have me raising my eyebrows, bug-eyed.)

[Jen L.]

LOVE this post. I thought I was over-doing the "watchful eye," so it's nice to see that other people feel the same way about the drowning toddlers.

I HATE those parents, by the way. A lady in our swim class got onto her soapbox every single day about the evils of Walmart and Target, saying she only shopped at Target when she absolutely had to and only because they give money to charity. My favorite day of swim lessons was when she undressed her kid by the pool...and stuffed his bathing suit into a Walmart bag.

[Swistle]

Ha ha, you get the funniest spamments!

Also, one of the reasons I'm SO GLAD we've outgrown the baby pool is the toy situation. Different pools seem to have different protocol about toy-sharing, and ours is big on toy-sharing. Which is GOOD, because it is near IMPOSSIBLE to keep it from happening or to even keep track of whose toy belongs to whom when they're all floating around in the water. The part I didn't like was trying to get our toys BACK when we were LEAVING.

[Swistle]

Oh! And another comment on pool toys is that I found a lot of parents thought the toys belonged to the pool---which is what I thought when I first started bringing the kids there, until I noticed many toys had names written on them. Sometimes when we'd go awkwardly to get a toy back, the parent would be genuinely bewildered about it and then I'd see the face light up with understanding: "OH!! You BROUGHT this toy!!" Adding to the confusion: several toys that DO belong to the pool, AND several toys that have been left behind by other people and are now played with by everyone.

[Ren]

This summer was my first experience with the tot pool toy situation. Older kids grabbing at floating toys my 15-month-old was clearly trying to grab was bad enough. But I was even more upset with the even older kids who practically ran over to blow on my bubble maker -- the kind you have to put your mouth on to blow. I understand the appeal of bubbles but this kid was old enough to know better (adult swim in the big pool flooded or tot pool with older kids) and I didn't need a school-aged germ carrier putting her mouth on my things! Things that were right at my elbow. Get out of my personal space and off of my things -- where are the parents?! Now I know better: no more bubbles at the pool. :(

[emmysuh]

Aaaand the strawberry popsicle adventure had me lol'ing.

[Karen]

This pretty much sums up why we avoid community pools like the plague. We joined a private sports club for their pool, but guess what! Just because people can pay more for pool privileges doesn't mean they have more class. My husband finally got fed up with a dad who let his kids STALK our kids around the pool, and when my husband sought out the desk clerk, said desk clerk shrugged and said he couldn't make them follow the rules. WTF? We quit.

My kids would have been the same way about the ice cream. Well, the middle child would.

[Aunt Becky]

I have written entire rants on Whole Foods and The People Who Religiously Shop At Them While Glaring At Me, Then Getting Into Their Gas Guzzling Range Rovers.

It's been awhile, but you know. I may have to dust one off and dedicate it to you.

[auntie]

The way some people let their kids behave just baffles me. I'm not particularly fond of letting other people use my pool stuff, but I'm not going to say "no, you can't use that water noodle" if someone asks. I mean, they cost like three bucks and I'm not a total scrooge!

But the thing is that most kids don't even ask, which just really makes me want to be mean. Most of the time, the kid will have one hand on the toy while they look at you like they know they should be asking but they just don't want to. Nice manners, kid. Grr.

[Michelle]

My friend refers to the ice cream truck as "the music truck" to her kids and they are none the wiser about the situation. I think that this is BRILLIANT and will be doing that with Joshua.

We have a pool at our townhouse complex which you have to have a key fob to get into (the gate won't open without it). My main gripe is when parents allow their older elementary school/tweens to come to the pool unaccompanied. The condo rules clearly state no one under 16 is to be unaccompanied... and I AM the beast in the pool that will say "umm... you don't look 16, you need a parent to come in here" and I hate myself for it. However, I'm not going to be the person there when their kid is injured and no one is around or when they're doing cannonballs next to my kid because they're so self absorbed they don't even SEE the 19 month old 3 feet away from them.

HATE "tweens" in public pools. End rant.

[ANNIE]

I was totally waiting for a revelation from Asher that he had carried it out there and put it down when you handed him his giant stawberry pop. That's what would happen to me - I'd get all fired up about the whole thing and then find the train in my purse or something.

[ANNIE]

Oh and can I just chime in on the whole unattended bigger (and sometimes not bigger) kids with an I KNOW. And an THEY MAKE ME CRAZY AND FIERCELY PROTECTIVE OF MY OWN KIDS and also a little of WATCH OUT BECAUSE I *WILL* DISCIPLINE YOUR KIDS AT THE PARK IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO DO IT. That is all. Loved this post, Emily. Howling at the ice cream part (my kids think the ice cream truck is just a truck that happens to have pictures of ice cream on it. You are brave to venture there), crying for Asher at the favorite toy part, and behind you all the way at the righteous anger part. Love.

[H]

For years, we lived next to a family in which the parents didn't supervise their numerous sons and, in fact, sometimes expected everyone else to watch them. We, including my children, were so frustrated we actually moved. That was 10 years ago and I must say it was one of the best decisions we've ever made. I simply do not understand that kind of behavior and it frustrates me to no end that the responsible parents have to adjust to adapt to the irresponsible ones. Good luck - and I, too, loved the ice cream truck story!

[Jackie]

i love you
we have boy girl twins that are 20 months old. and i SOO understand the pool thing. my daughter watched my husband throw max in the air in the pool and then she decided jumping off the stairs was a good idea. good thing im also parinoid about drowing kids (i live in vegas, we hear about drownings like once a week) so i made sure she learned to only try that on my count of 3, she throws her head back and all like a pro. scaary mini pro that is.
we dont bring toys yet tho cuz well, they are still happy with plastic cups and really anything that we have. heck i even saved a very, very (must be a fluke) round pine cone for them to use as a 'ball' at the playground. cuz well if they lose it in the midst of playing chase with themselves then oh well.
and yes i love organic milk.. heck we even have it delivered but its sad that that is the only thing i will spend extra money for. organic-smanic!

[Orion]

Oh! Please do a Whole Foods rant...that would be entertaining.

[MLCone]

Oh my goodness! I'm frequently aggravated by kids who are unsupervised and do not have manners. Now think about this scary fact...those kids all get sent to school where some poor teacher has to put up with them all day long and the parents will not back up the teacher when the kid gets in trouble.

[Stacie]

I totally understand the pool toy issue. My girls get so sad when a bigger kid takes their toys. If the bigger (or same aged) kid would actually ask my girls if they could play with their toys, my kids would say "yes". Without a doubt. But when their toys are just snatched and then thrown into the deep end or whatever, they get upset. I would too if I was 4 or 2. Heck I'm 32 and I get upset when a big kid snatches my kids' toys. And it really gets under my skin when I look over at his/her mom and they are just sunbathing in their teeny weeny bikini trying to make sure they don't have tan lines. What's more important, polite kids who can share or no tan lines. It's probably the same mom that shops at Whole Foods and thinks poorly of me for keeping Publix and Wal-mart in business.

[Cynthia]

My kids bought the Ice Cream Truck is Music Truck lie for a long, long time...

[Jen]

Some of these kids just think they are owed things are everyone is theirs. I bought my 21 month old Little Tykes climber out on the front lawn. Eightish year boys from all the over the neighbor were hanging on it and jumping on it and in general trying to wreck it. It's for TODDLERS for pete's sake. I had to run them off several times and they just whined "well, I want to play with it". Too bad!! It's ours.

[adequatemom]

Great post! I know what you mean when you wistfully write about the part where you get to sit down and relax and stop CONCENTRATING so damn much. We'll get there someday, I hope!