Modern Mediterranean

The Girl started swimming lessons at Independence Park last week. The time -- 6 p.m. -- is rather poor for a group of 3-5-year-olds, but I initially thought it was a parent-and-kid class and it was the only time that I knew could get in the pool with her. As it turns out, it's an unaccompanied-by-parent class. OK by me. The last thing I really want to do in January after a long workday and a long workweek is put on a bathing suit and get in a pool.

But today was lesson #2. So we made a mama-Girl playdate out of it. After her lesson, we headed out in search of food. The original plan was to eat at Target, where we needed to run an errand, but since The Dad took The Girl to McDonald's for lunch, I thought we had eaten enough crap for the day. Instead, I took her to Zebda, a new mostly-carryout deli that has opened not far from our house. 

We've ordered Zebda a few times -- twice for carryout and once, The Dad and I took The Tot there to eat-in. I've tried three different dishes on the menu and they've all been good. I usually find a restaurant, find what I like on the menu, and then order it every time. In the case of Zebda, it's all been so good, I want to keep trying stuff! Tonight, I had the grilled chicken panini ($6) and The Girl had the Gnocchi ($11). Both were fabulous. We also met the chef, Katie Garcia, who happened to be there. While I know there is some advantage to meeting the chef, I could think of nothing great to say except, "I'm glad you opened. And I didn't know you had cookies!" The Girl and I also got some gorgeous cookies to take home -- a round thing soaked in orange blossom scent and decorated with a white fondant flower dipped in pink sparkly sanding sugar, and a coconut petit-four dipped in white icing and decorated with blue dragees. We ate them after our trip to Target, but they'd be perfect with coffee.

Me, The Tot and .... not many others

In August, I signed The Tot up for a couple of classes, including Jammin' with Julie and the Park District's Tot Spot at Mayfair Park. I had hesitated taking The Tot to the Mayfair Tot Spot class because he seemed to be having such a hard time with Ms. Julie, a woman he's seen and heard on a near-weekly basis since birth. Plus, the weather has been nice, the class fee was extremely low ($10), and well, I just plain forgot about it a couple of times. However, today we went.

And The Tot did really well. When we arrived, the classroom was not set up. The only PD employee I saw explained that her superiors had told her not to even bother setting up the room since only 1 person had shown up for the class in the past few weeks. She showed me where the toy closet was and The Tot and I went to town taking out the PD's toys. Within about 10 minutes, another little girl and her babysitter showed up. She was the same age as The Tot, but an only child. That may seem like superfluous information, but it was really apparent in the way they both played and related to each other. If they were interested in the same toy, The Tot often desisted and went to play with something else until she became bored with the contested toy; then he circled back to pick it up again.

Fearmongering

Last week at tee-ball practice, I was bringing The Girl back from the bathroom when I witnessed an exchange between a mom from another team and her 2-year-old daughter about "stranger danger." The tot wanted to play around the corner from her sibling's practice area, preventing her mother from having direct line of sight supervision. In an attempt to convince her daughter, the mom said, "Do you want Stranger Danger to come get you?" To me, it sounded like stranger danger was a person, not a concept.

It is an interesting topic to me, as most people perceive living in the city as more dangerous than living in the suburbs. Having been raised in the suburbs (by, ironically, parents raised in NYC themselves), and seeing the kinds of things that happen there, I think the city's bad reputation (as compared to the 'burbs) is undeserved. Still, as The Boy approaches the age where he is more likely to be swiped by a random stranger, I am starting to think about how I am going to teach my children to protect themselves against "bad people."

I have always been rather laid-back in supervising my children in public, and also in instilling fear of the unknown in them. I've read the statistics; it's exceedingly unlikely that The Girl or The Baby is going to be swiped by a random stranger at the park. I don't want them to be unnecessarily or overly anxious about something that really isn't a huge risk in their daily lives. But obviously, I want to protect their privacy -- I wouldn't use pseudonyms on this blog if I wasn't concerned.

Yesterday, I spent an hour on the playground at Mayfair Park with Allison and her kids, and Caroline and her kids. As much as moms can while chasing 8 kids around the playground, we talked at length about "stranger danger," The Gift of Fear (Gavin De Becker's book, which I have not read), and the likelihood that our children would fall victim to a bad person or know what to do in those situations.