A Playdate at Starbucks
“Do you know that she is drinking your iced tea?”
My friend Jill and I brought our two year old daughters to our local Starbucks for their weekly “play-date”; i.e., we get wired on caffeine and maniacally discuss all of our brilliant business ideas while our toddlers eat goldfish crackers and fend for themselves. This particular morning, we had taken over the Starbucks patio.
Apparently, as Jill and I were brainstorming ideas for the sitcom we are developing (probably along with every other jackass in that LA Starbucks), Kiana grabbed my venti iced green tea (no sweetner and no water) and began to chug it.
“It’s OK, it’s just green tea,” I replied, and continued to tell her about my pilot idea, which included using actual clips of Paris Hiltons sex-tape video. “But how do we get the rights for the sex-tape?”
When my son Shane was two years old, we spent our days at museums and beaches. We built sandcastles, danced in the waves, and explored every park in Los Angeles. He was in music class, Mommy and Me, Toddler Tae Kwon Do, and Yoga for Tots. We had regular play-dates which focused on child-centered activities. Most of his waking moments were dedicated towards his enrichment.
This morning, my husband and I took Kiana on a special outing to Costco. And you would have thought the girl was at Disneyland. She had the biggest smile on her face as we shopped for toilet paper and she giggled hysterically as her Daddy ran down the aisles with her in the shopping cart. While we were in the checkout line, my husband opened an industrial sized bag of barbecue potato chips and let her eat them out of the bag. She was in heaven.
So, while Shane got the Santa Monica surf and Natural History Museum, Kiana gets the coffee-shop patio and warehouse shopping.
But I can guarantee you that at two years old, Shane never got to swig from my iced tea or eat chips out of the bag!
