One of Them

It's so easy to judge the women standing in line at 7:00am on a Saturday morning to sign their toddlers up for park district classes. They're wearing their preppy workout clothes and expensive tennis shoes, bitching about the disorganization of this system, comparing notes on how long they've been on the waiting list for the best preschools in the city, and scaring each other with horror stories about the worst pesticides used on blueberries. It's easy to wonder if they don't have anything better to be doing with their time. Easy to assume they're laying on the toddler activities pretty thick. Easy to roll your eyes at their over-achiever personalities being focused on their poor children.

Easy, that is, until you are one.

Yep. I did it. I sat in line for 2 1/2 hours last Saturday morning, in the rain, no less, to sign Anders (yes, my 18 month old) for gymnastics class. Ridiculous? Yes. Worth it? Absolutely.

The Chicago Park District offers a huge variety of classes for really cheap. Some are better than others, but it's all stuff you couldn't do anywhere else for the price. One such class is gymnastics. It's totally age appropriate and just plain fun for the kids. It's a good way for a stay-at-home mom to structure her day/week, see other moms/dads and kids, and get the wiggles out of her active boys so that they take nice, long afternoon naps.

You can sign up online for the classes, but some of the popular ones -- like gymnastics -- fill up within one second of registration's opening time. They save some walk-in slots, thus the early morning line up.

For this session I had signed Isaac up for a drop-off gymnastics class online. I wanted to get Anders in to a Mom, Dads, and Tots class at the same time, but by the time I clicked "register" for Anders, the online slots were full.

So I joined all the other over-achiever moms in line on a rainy Saturday morning and reminded myself to get off my judgmental high horse. Because, you know, I was there too!