BABY MAMA April 2016 | Page 35

Baby Mama STANDARD Femme Funtales By Nicole Blaine, Comedy Chieftain finding parenthood painfully funny My Baby’s Play Date With a Ghost N othing makes time stand still more than when you’re stuck watching your children go down the same slide for the 27th time. It’s like watching paint dry, while simultaneously waiting for water to boil. To survive the psychological torture of the park— you know, the place where no matter how hard you push your mistakes away from you, they come swinging back to kick you in the face with a pair of sand-filled Crocs—I typically arrive by the middle of my day, 9:00 a.m. Right when the dew on the slides can penetrate down to the Underoos. I generally like to assess the scene for a cool-looking parent with whom I can converse so as to properly ignore my children. Enter Amanda. Playground Left. Sunlight bouncing off her hand-combed ponytail. Fashionforward sweatpants. Easily the coolest mom at the park. I convince my littlest to eat the sand near her kids so I can make my move. Amanda is super-sweet. She tells me she makes