Mommy wars

If we lived in Beverly Hills, I would expect every child at the playground would be dressed like this:

In comparison, here we have my daughter.

What's wrong with this picture? (Besides the fact that her hand-me-down shirt doesn't match her $1 consignment sale pants?)

Don't get distracted by the awesome purple cowboy hat in the background. Look closely.

That's right. We went to lunch and the playground with NO SHOES. In my defense, there used to be a pair in the car. But then I cleaned out the car yesterday. Oops.

I'm pretty sure Nora's mom and thrift store mommy aren't going to get along.

Let's take a moment to review the rules of the playground:

By "adult supervision" I think they mean you have to be within at least 50 feet of your daughter.

...and there she goes.

Seriously, letting her kid play in traffic was her best mothering moment.

Now that Mari is older she's agile enough to play on the slides by herself so I generally stay out of the way and let navigate the baby social scene solo. If I'm there and it's just the two of us, I'll go in and interact with her. But since the place was crawling with kids and I was there with a friend, we sat outside the play area on a bench.

Which is where we were sitting when I heard Marielle scream.

Apparently Nora had stolen Marielle's beloved doll. I nicely asked her to give it back. Nicely - the first 5 times. Then she didn't. Her friend Cameron couldn't even wrestle it away from her. Nora declared, "But I don't have a doll like this, so I'm going to take it home." This is where I should have kicked her in the face and used her hair to wipe up the blood. Unfortunately I could not yet sense the evil within and gave her the benefit of the doubt.

The second time I had to get off my ass, put down my diet coke, and go inside was when Cameron and Nora declared the slide was "theirs" and no one else could go down it. Mari was patiently signing "please" while they continued their general douchebaggery and she tried to figure out what she had done wrong.

The final trip from mommy zone into kiddieland, also known as when I almost went f@(*^#ing nuts, was when I heard Nora say "I don't even know what they are!" I looked up and saw her holding Marielle's hearing aids in her hands, IN PIECES.

I really don't know why I didn't immediately go apeshit and just start beating the Burberry out of Nora's mom. She was sitting 5 feet away from us, chatting with her friend (backs to the kids), completely oblivious as I screamed to Carrie, "Nora just broke Marielle's hearing aid in half!"

At that point I pretty much gave up the supervision from afar and set up residence about 4 feet from Mari's side.

In retrospect I think I was way too calm. If I ever see this woman at the playground again, I'm going to beat the shit out of her. Trust me, she'll never see it coming.

(Note this is not Nora's brother. This is her friend's kid. Her kid is in the stroller alone, about 20 feet away. I'm pretty sure if he were kidnapped it would be the best thing to ever happen to him.)