Hot book tip:

I just read The Three Martini Playdate by Christie S. Mellor and I highly recommend it.

Some of my favorite chapters are (in no particular order):

• Introduction: In Praise of Grown-up Time
• Saying No to Your Child: It’s a Kick!
• “Children’s Music”: Why?
• Your Cost Effective Tomboy
• Don’t, Like, Waste My Time

And of course…

• The Three-Martini Playdate

Basically, I love this book because it strips down the notion that parenting means we should stop being individuals, and ADULTS who are in control, but live to be only a mommy or daddy with children who make the rules.

When I had my son, I was seriously opposed to becoming simply That Baby’s Mom. I do have a name and an identity (as does he, but I am not sharing it here). Sure, I am his mother but by being a separate entity I feel I can be a better, more objective mother.

The one thing that I was firmly opposed to was this. I refused to combine my purse and his diaper bag.

My best friend, who had a baby a few months prior to me, came to my baby shower but didn’t bring the baby. And she had the biggest purse I had ever seen her carry. When I asked her what the hell she needed to bring with her that she had taken to carrying around a duffle bag - and she simply replied, with a shrug: “It’s the diaper bag.”

So, no matter how many bags or how much I resembled a pack-horse I never combined the two. I know, I know… it seems silly and petty, but I felt like it was a firm stand at maintaining my identity.

It is the little things.