Because I Said So
My life as a Mom

This post was originally going to be a comment over at Bad Mommy No Biscuit, until I decided I’d be better off putting it here and not spamming her journal with my navel-gazing.

Anyway.

The funny thing about having an infant in the 90th percentile for height is that I have a really skewed mental image of what 7-month olds look like. At least seventeen times a day, I’ll see a baby and think “oh, they look about Pickle’s age,” and then become incredibly insecure when that baby, say, stands up. Or eats a Cheerio, or drinks from a sippy cup, or any other of a million things just the other side of the Pickle’s developmental horizon. And then I realize that Other Baby is probably closer to 10 months than 7, and that I am not, in fact, a complete failure as a mother. I hope.

There is another baby in our building almost exactly 4 weeks younger than our Pickle, for whom we sometimes babysit (and vice versa). The last time we saw him was about a month ago, and I was amazed at how tiny he seemed. (Not entirely age-related - both of his parents are smaller in stature than DH and I.) But even moreso, I was amazed at how well he held his bottle and was able to feed himself. 4 weeks younger, and already holding his own bottle! Why doesn’t the Pickle do that? What were we doing wrong??

I consoled myself with the knowledge that the Pickle can sit up on his own and roll around and do all sorts of mobility-related things that Neighbor Baby wasn’t doing yet. And who needs fine motor skills anyway?

And, of course, within a couple more weeks, Pickle was holding his own bottle and perfecting his pincer grasp and doing all the fine motor skills things I’d been so worried about. He’s fine. He’s perfect.

And it’s not a race.