Members of the Moms Club take their kids to parks, the zoo, Great Explorations, a fire station and meet weekly at one anothers' homes for play groups.
Families get together for recipe swaps and potluck dinners. For "Moms' Night Out," they go ice skating, see movies, eat out, get pedicures, paint pottery and make scrapbooks.
But no matter where they are or what they're doing, the common denominator is kids - and all the questions, confusion and joy that come with raising a family.
Linda Hart's son was about 3 months old when she joined. "I had no idea what I was doing. But then I could bounce questions off so many other moms," she said at a recent Moms Night Out.
She started going to play groups once a week. Her son rolled around with the other babies, and she talked with moms about motherhood, starting with breast-feeding.
"Until then, I just thought nursing was supposed to hurt," she said, laughing. When she went back to work, the group started meeting once a month in the afternoon so Hart could come.
"I was 42 when I had my daughter. Nobody in my neighborhood around me had kids," Julie Menke said. "I had been working, and suddenly I was at home with my child and the four walls. I wanted to be around other moms and find out if my kid was normal . . . if I was normal."
"Whenever I have a question, I know somebody here has been through it," said Lisa Poole, another member.
I frequently hear from readers wondering where a new mom who just moved to town can meet other moms. I always suggest they find a support group at the nearest hospital or try the Moms Club. (There also is an active Twins Club with chapters around the country.)
I recently was invited to join the five St. Petersburg chapters of the Moms Club at their Moms Night Out at the Olive Garden in Pinellas Park. Chapters have 30 to 60 members and are divided into geographic areas of the city. All chapters get together once a month for Moms Night Out but meet once a week as chapters and in smaller play groups, too, based on children's ages.
The club is looking for more moms - dads, too - and is hosting a membership drive at Gladden Park, 3901 30th Ave. N, on March 30 at 10:30 a.m. You also can sign up at the Web site momsclub.org. At the recent Moms Night Out, the conversations flitted from work, travel, the conclusion of Sex in the City to who's pregnant, pregnancy food cravings, husbands who never put the trash bag back in the can, and husbands who gladly take bath duty every night. Supposedly, talking about kids is off limits on these nights, but that rule never stands.
At one end of the table, several mothers discussed the maze of school choices and the lengths they went to get their kids enrolled in private preschools. Some showed up in predawn hours to be the first in line.
"We used to camp out to get concert tickets. What have we become?" said Roni Murphy, laughing.
The Moms Club isn't for new mothers only. Cheryl Barnes, mother of two, was a founding member of her chapter six years ago. "Most of my best friends I met in Moms Club," she said.
And she still finds she needs the support and answers found among the pool of members.
Mothers forget the problems and solutions they had with their first kids when they are on their second and third, Barnes said. And if you want to go back and check the baby book, it was never finished for the first baby and never even started for the second, she added.
There have been a few stay-at-home dads during the years in the Moms Club. Currently, Shad Biltz is the only male member in St. Petersburg.
"There are so many similarities between parents whether a man or a woman. I've picked up a lot of things that help," Biltz said, as he sat at the long table surrounded by women. "But when we do something like this and there are no kids, it looks like I have a harem."
Even the talk of breast-feeding doesn't make him uncomfortable. But when the outing at a past Moms Night Out was going to see Under The Tuscan Sun, Biltz said he couldn't handle that one. He found a horror movie instead.
For more information about the Moms Club, check the Web site or call Lisa Poole at 827-3100. For information about the Twins Club, call 347-2303.
- You can reach Katherine Snow Smith by e-mail at snowsmith@verizon.net or write Rookie Mom, St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731.
