Pool mamas

My friend G just logged a most excellent post about making mom friends and how being a mom sometimes makes it hard to find mom friends because alot of those little quirky things we would normally try to keep under wraps come out in our parenting.

Which got me thinking about the different kinds of pool mamas I see and the ones to whom I tend to gravitate.

I am a "sit by the kiddie pool and watch my kid" mama. If N's neighborhood friends are there, I talk to their moms, but I keep a close eye on N and what she is doing with her friends (or doing to them or having done to her). I would say the majority of the moms at the pool fall into the same category.

But then there are the "sit away from the pool and talk on the cell phone while your kids wreak absolute havoc in the kiddie pool and you occasionally yell for them to stop it but you never lift your ass off the lounge chair and end your phone conversation" mamas.

I have a hard time with these gals.

Mind you, there are like 2 of them at the pool of which N and I are members, and both have 3+ kids. Since I only have 1 kid right now I cannot honestly say that I wouldn't be the same way as one of my only means to ensure some remnants of sanity are left by the end of the day.

Today one of these mama's kids was playing with N's Dora doll, which was totally fine until she launched it over the fence into the big pool area (meaning I had to pick my pregnant butt up and march over there to retrieve it). Did her mama see this and reprimand her? Nope---her mama was having a very intense conversation with some other mama. She has 3 kids, but the other 2 are bigger and often not in the kiddie pool area at all (so at these times she, like me, is only having to watch 1 child).

Maybe I'm just boring and since I have very little to discuss with anyone I can use my time to actually keep an eye on my kid. Lord knows I wouldn't have enough interesting topics to fill up 3 minutes on a cell phone even if I did own a cell phone.

But the truth is I do sometimes talk to other moms at the pool....moms who tend to sit right at the pool and keep an eye on their kid(s) like I do. Maybe they are frustrated by the 1 or 2 moms who spend a little too much of their pool time in la-la-land.

I don't want to discipline other people's kids when their mamas are 10 feet away. I have a hard enough time managing my own child's behavior, let alone the 4 or 5 others who's moms are too busy chatting to see that their kids are spraying others in the face with a water gun, or pitching toys over the fence, or pulling pieces off toys that don't actually belong to them.

If these moms were busy nursing a newborn or tending to one of their other children, I would have a much easier time accepting their inability to keep an eye on their kids, but when I hear them blathering on about a big sale at Kohl's or what the rest of their weekend plans look like I can't muster up anything other than a sarcastic, "O Jesus."

And I am certain that these couple of moms are blogging this moment about the uptight moms at the pool who hover, look like they need an intravenous vodka drip, and sometimes give them the evil eye.