All posts tagged: boardwalk empire

And THAT’S What You Remember?

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So we just had a fun weekend celebrating Ryder’s third birthday. (Ryder’s mother and I have been dear friends since first grade. Our boys have no choice but to be besties. It was sealed in the family fates.) We went to Vernon, NJ, to accomplish several things: celebrate a 3-year-old birthday, try to have parental fun, swim in a hotel pool and visit a pumpkin patch. We accomplished all of the above. And it was great…in retrospect. In the moment, why must so many activities be so laborious? Am I alone in finding it hard to relax during activities that that take us a 5-minute walk from our apartment? Creating picture-perfect experiences is just so difficult.

NOTHING’S THAT BIG A DEAL

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Certain events with the kids cause me serious angst: subway trips, birthday parties and plane trips. Subway trips mean we’ll be out for a long time. Beyond temper tantrums, this is what stresses me out: What if it’s a 105 degree summer day on the subway platform with 98% humidity and I get swamp-ass and people laugh at my wet khakis? What if the subway stops and we’re stuck inside for three hours without enough battery life on my phone to keep the kids quiet or enough goldfish snacks to keep ME happy? And then what if desperation drives me to pee between subway cars?

SCREW SUNSETS, I WANT MY IPAD

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The other day I read a spot-on post by a mother lamenting the fact that her kids don’t look out at the river when they’re driving. Instead, their faces are buried in touch screens. Screw my kids’ appreciation. What about my burning desire to stare at a touch screen? I stand at the playground and challenge myself to see how long I can hold off checking texts. Sometimes I make it two and a half minutes…if Colton isn’t gleefully stealing toys from younger kids. Once I’ve extracted the phone and glanced at the home page alerts, I might as well swipe, punch my code, and see if emails jumped from 13 to 14. Maybe a life-changing message arrived in the ninety seconds since I slipped the phone into my pocket (to unload the stroller). Yes, I was scrolling HuffPost while pushing the stroller to the playground. I might not have looked up as I crossed streets, dodged an old lady using a walker, and avoided dog poop. Busy bodies might think I never looked up …