Attention:

Ahem. Good afternoon, readers. I come to you today atop my soap box. Actually, my co-worker, Melissa, just ragged on me about being such a sucky blogger, so I've decided to rant a bit about an experience I had this weekend. Here goes:

Saturday afternoon, Kailyn and I met my stepmom, Penny, at the MAC (public pool), here in town, which we love to go to. It is a very nice pool! At first, there weren't very many people, but still probably 12-15 kids under the age of 12 and probably a maximum of 4 adults. I was wondering when this became acceptable. I mean, when did 11 year olds become responsible enough to be left in charge of their 5 and 7 year old siblings at a crowded public pool? Well, don't get me wrong, after the crowd got bigger, there were definitely more adults, and there were even a few parents that interacted with their children. What's terrible, is that the few parents that were playing with their children, I knew. I mean, I knew the people, and I never doubted that they were great parents. Some of the characters at the pool, however.....shady. I'm a hawk on Kailyn when she is in water. She is in swimming lessons, but is not yet a "swimmer". So I am always within close range of her in the shallow or we are together in the deep. I don't understand why that would be hard for anyone. On Saturday, I honestly watched a little girl, probably around 4, drink a half gallon or more of the pool water. Her sister? kept saying, "Don't drink the pool water" and finally, her mom told her to quit. Well, do most 4 year olds quit when mom's not paying attention? NO! She just kept on drinking! A little later, Kailyn and I were floating together on her noodle in the shallow, when the same little girl came up to us and said, "I'll play on that too". I said, "Well, there's not really room for 3 people, sorry". No worries, she just shoved Kailyn over and made room for herself. The "sister" said, "Did that woman say you could get on that?" and a few minutes later, her mom said, "That's not yours", which I gave the polite "She's fine", but apparently the girl doesn't like being questioned, because she then stormed off. The mom said, "(Name), where are you going now?", to which the little girl responded with a scream, "Don't talk to me!" Sweet. I also watched two younger children wrestle in the water, with the older girl holding the younger boy under over and over and over. Where was their mother, you ask? She was a little too busy picking her toes and making out with her boyfriend to bother. That's right, I said picking her toes.....Happy drinking, little girl. Are you serious? While we may live in a small town, things can still happen. Anything could happen with that many adolescent children and no adult supervision, and I'm sure the lifeguards do their best, but accidents happen. Wouldn't you rather be the kind of parent who knows that their child is safe and well behaved? Please don't get me wrong, my child is by no means perfect. She loves to jump in the water off the side wall and hold on to the wall or her kick board and kick around, but don't think I'm not constantly there to say, "Watch out, Kailyn", "You need to wait until they go by to jump", or "Did she splash you, I'm so sorry". I guess I thought everyone had a bit of common courtesy in them. Maybe not.

Ok, ok, I'm done. I'm sorry, I just don't understand why people don't care, especially about their babies. As I climb down safely from my soap box, I will leave you with the 12th week cartoon from baby-gaga.com.