Hope you don't slip on those organic greens, biznitch.

You know you're a suburban parent when the mom next to you in line at Harry's Farmers Market is wearing a silk tunic, leggings, and four-inch-high studded leather heels. Even better? Her child  was wearing a polo shirt and had a fauxhawk.

Blog slacking -- but fun Naptime Checklist to make up for it!

Hi kids. Apologies to the five people who read this blog, but I have been busy eating my weight in Asian cuisine on Buford Highway for the last three days thanks to a fabulous field trip with the Southern Foodways Alliance. (Never heard of 'em? Get your asses to their website pronto. They will be getting all my money when I die, and they should get yours too.)

Anyhow, as I was off doing a decidedly non suburban parent thing by completely ignoring my child in favor of bulgogi, I wanted to make up for it with some extra parent-y things for your enjoyment. Please, allow me to lay upon you ...

The Suburban Parent's 10-Step Nap Time Checklist
Your offspring is sleeping and you have that golden hour and a half until they wake. Wondering what to do with yourself? Just follow the steps below to ensure that you're being a true suburban parent.

1. Eat something. Typically microwaved. Chase with diet carbonated beverage. Feel guilty for not eating vegetables. Go back to fridge and eat handful of baby carrots. Congratulate yourself unnecessarily. Go to computer.

2. Frantically check email in order to find the two real emails from people you like among 15 piece-of-crap sales announcements from websites you've ordered stuff from. Schedule time to drink with said people and/or play with their kids. Sometimes both at once.

3. Succumb to one "40% off today only" offer email. Click through and browse site. Load up shopping cart with cute dress/smarmy t-shirt for kid. Add cute shirt for you. Add cool shirt for husband. Add birthday gift for friend. Add something you'd never wear from clearance page because it costs $8.99. Go to check out. Enter address. Figure out shipping. Hover mouse above “Next”button. Abandon sale because purse and wallet are upstairs and that's just too far away to go to get your credit card number.

4. Log on to Facebook. Update status with information about progress of child's illness/potty training/food allergies. Look at other friend's status updates to see how their child's illness/potty training/food allergies are. Feel momentarily unhip, so post additional link on page referring to "awesome" thing you just saw on YouTube/NPR.

5. Get up from computer to clean up dishes. Notice dishes from previous meal are still on table. Bring them to sink, but realize clean dishes in dishwasher have not been unloaded. Rationalize that if you're LOADING the dishwasher, your spouse/significant other should at least UNLOAD the dishwasher. Feel indignant about how much you do around the house versus how much they do around the house. Leave dishes by sink as a form of silent protest.

6. Debate showering.

7. Get mail. Realize that it's your first time outside all day, and note that the pajama pants you are wearing are too warm/too cold for season.

8. Go back inside. Read mail. Toss Red Plum circular except for Papa John's coupon.

9. Debate showing again.

10. Decide that you better get something productive done. Feel surge of motivation. Change out of pajama pants. Put on clean underwear. Brush hair. Brush teeth. Go confidently in the direction of doing laundry/picking up toys/writing grocery list …


DING! Silly parent. You’re time is up! Little Johnny is now wide awake, and ready for the several additional hours of enrichment and learning that you are legally obligated to provide. Didn’t get a thing done? Don’t worry. You’ll get those pesky chores done during nap time tomorrow. Right after you check your email.

Ice cream

You know you're a suburban parent when you lie to your child about there being no more ice cream so you can secretly eat the last of it later when they are sleeping.

Wait, that might make me a terrible parent rather than just a suburban one. Yep. Pretty sure that's terrible.

Father's Day

You know you're a suburban parent when your gift to your husband on Father's Day is that you'll take his turn scrubbing the stank out of the Diaper Genie. (I love you, kitten!)

Peeing

You know you're a suburban parent when: you've considered peeing into a diaper yourself just to see how much it would hold -- or have actually executed said peeing.    (Size 6's are extremely absorbent, I'll have you know.)

You Know You're a Suburban Parent When ...

You have attended a birthday party at an inflatables place within the last year.

Sad but true.

I'll admit it. I'm a suburban parent. Not a freakin' soccer mom, mind you, just a relatively normal person who used to do cool things (such as walk to work, read books without pictures, and drink in bars on weeknights) who is now the proud owner of a small child, and therefore living in the grand sprawl we call the 'burbs. I've discovered there are lots of us out here, and sadly, there's some crazy crap we find ourselves doing that is miles away from our pre-child hipster promises to ourselves. We swore we'd never own minivans and SUVs. We swore we'd still go to awesome concerts and wear trendy clothes. We swore that our children would be organic locavores that would happily dig into plates of salad greens and hormone-free chicken instead of begging us for dinosaur-shaped, cartoon-branded, microwavable "chickn" nuggets. Then, we actually had children, and all that got shot to hell.

There I things I do every day that make me know that I am a suburban parent. They simultaneously disturb, enlighten, and amuse me. I hope they will do the same for you.

One word of warning: For those of you who think you are too cool for school, who think "I'll never be like this, you silly suburbanites," and who are reading this on an iPhone on the way to your prenatal yoga class with your birthing playlist on in the background, get ready. And go ahead and start memorizing the lyrics to the Wow Wow Wubbzy theme song. 

So, without further ado, let me now present: You Know You're a Suburban Parent When ...