Well this is awkward...

Thing 2 loves to dance.  If one of her jams comes on the radio, she'll shake her car seat like it's the '89 World Series in San Francisco.  

A little while back we took the kiddos to Ripley's Aquarium in Toronto and as we stood in line, Uptown Funk starts blaring out of the sound system.  She stood there and shook her diapered ass like no one was watching.  Only hundreds of people were.  The grin on her face was priceless. 

I see a future full of recitals and expensive dance outfits.  Can't wait.

So anyway, because I love her so dearly, I signed her up for a free session of this thing called Salsa Tots.  It sounded harmless enough.  I envisioned a room full of two and three year old kids and lots of salsa music.  I could tolerate that for an hour no problem.

There was a problem though. Only two other kids capable of walking showed up.  The rest of the dozen little ones were strapped to their moms' chests.  Odd, I'm sure it said this was for kids aged two and three. But we stuck around. How bad could it be, right?  Naturally, I was the only male over 3.  I'm used to that by now.  My presence was neither welcomed or acknowledged.  I'm used to that by now too.

Seeing the turnout, the instructor announces that the demo class would now be half Salsa Tots, and half Salsa Babies. I assumed the Babies version might be slower beats or something like that.  We dance for ten minutes with the tots while the baby-toting moms do their best to look as inconvenienced as possible.  This is what you signed up for, ladies.  The instructor, sensing she's beginning to lose out on some subscribers decides it's time to switch demos.

Salsa Babies, as it turns out, is like a Zumba program for moms wearing their babies. Why any one would want to exercise with a baby attached to them is beyond my comprehension, but to each their own.  To me, it's weird. Now I tried to be a sport and hold all 25 pounds of Thing 2 to my chest and do some of these moves. I got some weird looks from the moms and Thing 2 alike.  This was awkward.  Clearly no one is comfortable in this situation. It was time for us to go.

So we did one of these:

Once out of the room, I frantically searched for our shoes in the entrance way, jammed them on our feet as fast as humanly possible and got us the hell out of there.  If she was upset about, thankfully she didn't show it.  I think she knew Daddy needed to leave.  For the good of everyone involved.

Oh the places we will go.

The Art of Invisibility

Sometimes everyone feels they're invisible.  For instance, I almost got smoked the other morning while towing the kids in their bike trailer by a person backing out of their driveway in a school zone.  You would think someone living on the same street as a primary level school would be extra careful when backing out of their driveway at 8:45 in the morning.  Not so much.

But there's another way you can be invisible, and that's to be any dad out in public.   About a month back, I brought my two to toddler time at the local indoor trampoline park.  You think this would be the most fun place you could bring your child.  They get to jump around out springy floors and throw big balls at each other.  Well Thing 1 and 2 quickly grew bored of this and discovered the mini lockers near the snack shop.  You want to talk about fun?  Fun is watching two tiny kids squeeze themselves into little tiny ground level lockers then pop out and say boo seconds later.  I thought it was as hilarious as they did.  

Note: Please ignore the fact the my phone takes photos the same quality as a Polaroid circa 1976.  This was the best of the five pics I took.

Now I'm standing about 6 feet away, taking pics to send to my wife who had to work.  This other kid comes up and wants to play too, but his helicopter mom quickly says no and tells him that he could suffocate in there because there's no air holes. Are you f'ing kidding me? She then proceeds to physically pull my kids out of the lockers and tell them it's not safe.  I was dumbfounded and just kind of stood there in shock.  She appeared to be heading for the exit, so I tried to let it go.  She had good intentions I'm sure, but the more I thought about it, the more it pissed me off.  I never thought for a second that any harm could come to either of them by playing in the lockers.

I saw the Safety Mom again about 20 minutes later, so I did the only thing I thought would calm me down about it.  I went over to her and asked her what she thought gave her the right to parent my kids, let alone physically remove them from the locker. Now it was her turn to be the dumbfounded one.  She stammered an apology and said she didn't see the kids' mom around.  

Wow.  I mean, it's not like I was the only dad in the place.  It was a Sunday after all.

So maybe I am invisible.  Maybe all dads are invisible in public places. Or moms all over just assume we're incompetent and that they know better, even if the kids aren't their own.  Hopefully that mentality changes before my kids grow up.  Or else, it's going to be a long 16 or so more years of being a SAHD.

Anyway, I tell my wife the story later that day and she tells me about Mommy Wars.  You should Google it if you've never heard of it. I may have fallen victim despite the lack of a uterus.  My wife couldn't believe that I confronted the woman.  Apparently that's a Mommy Wars no-no.  You're just supposed go online and bitch about the other parent inferior way of parenting.  Now I know.  So I got the satisfaction of confronting her, and I got to bitch about here.  Double-win.