Some more friendly yet unsolicited advice from someone I don't know.

After taking Mateo to the park yesterday where he tried to run straight into the lake, and when he wasn't doing that, he was giving me heart attacks when he went to the top of play structure, which was so not the plan, and I was on the ground, and I had to scramble up the side of the structure to get to him before he fell from one of the many openings at the top (thank you, nice man, who ensured my child didn't fall to his death), we hung out at our condo's courtyardy-greenbelt area. I felt bad that his park adventure was cut short, but I was sweating up a storm and just slightly embarrassed that I let my child go up the play structure alone only for him to try and kill himself while I assumed he was going to go down the slide, so I decided the greenbelt was a much more stressless area for him to play (unless you consider the fountain in the middle of the greenbelt).

For whatever reason, whenever I take him out to the greenbelt to play, he decides he wants to sit on the bench with me instead of running around like a goofball, picking up sticks and leaves and trying to toss himself into the fountain, which, from what I'm told by my husband, is all he ever does when my husband takes him outside.

I was taking pictures of him and of some leaves, and just enjoying the time outside, when the annoying condo lady came out of the condo gym.

"Oh, look at that cutie," she said from behind us.

Ugh, I thought.

Mateo is not a shy child, but when he's around unfamiliar people, he does act a tad on the shy side. He was peeking at her from the side of the bench.

"Are you being all shy now? Say 'hello'," I told him.

He kept peeking. He's also a good judge of character, and he really didn't want to have any to do with the lady, and I certainly don't blame him.

"I just hate it when mothers say their children are like that," she said.

"Like what?" I asked.

"Shy!" she said. "That's the worst thing a mother can say about her child because the child will hear it over and over and then the child will have to live with that for the rest of his life!"

I looked at her.

She's got some serious issues, besides being really annoying.

"Oh, he's not shy," I said. "He's far from it. However, he is acting shy."

"Well, it's just a shame when mothers say that about their kids," she replied.

Okay....how about if I was calling him an idiot or ugly or stupid or a jerk or a bunch of other choice words? And maybe, just maybe, a mom knows more about her child than some annoying condo lady, and when the mom says her kid is shy, it just might be because her kid is shy. Or it's just a way to cover up why the kid doesn't want to have anything to do with annoying condo ladies, and the mom is just being polite.

Don't know. Could be so many things.

"He's a party animal, life of the party, sort of kid. He's not shy," I said.

"Good. So my husband and I got BBQ at this Southern BBQ restaurant blah blah blah," she started to tell me. Mateo and I were trapped for a good 15 minutes (okay, 5 minutes) while she talked about herself.

Finally she left. And my shy boy and I went back inside so I could change his clothes and clean him up because, you know, he's so shy and all, he didn't want to play or run into the lake or try to toss himself off the play structure at the park.