Because I Said So
My life as a Mom

I’ve just registered at Sproglogs and entered in all of Pickle’s height and weight info from his yellow card. It’s all information I have, but now in handy interbunny chart form!

I haven’t added anything else because I already have all his pictures up on Flickr and videos on Youtube and milestone “diary entries” here. But if I ever need to look at his growth curve online, I am *all* *set*.

Put Pickle to sleep last night. Five minutes later, hear crying. Wait it out. Doesn’t stop. Go in to rock him back to sleep….find him STANDING UP IN THE FRELLING CRIB.

Now, this isn’t the first time he’s pulled himself up to standing, or even the first time he’s done it in the crib. But it’s the first time he’s done it (a) at bedtime, (b) from lying down, and (c) wearing a sleepsack.

He’s napping now. As soon as he wakes up, we are going to Babies R Us and cleaning out their babyproofing section. Gates are going up EVERYWHERE. Padding will be afixed to the edges of EVERYTHING. (Meanwhile a part of me is thinking, wouldn’t it just be easier to cushion the baby?)

How quickly things change!

A few short weeks ago, I was despairing of ever introducing the Pickle to finger foods, and now, suddenly, he loves them. It was like a switch was turned on - it happened that fast. One day he would do nothing but gaze disinterestedly at the lovingly sliced pieces of banana I had laid out before him. Now, at breakfast-time, he eyes my bagel and pitches a minor fit if I don’t offer him at least a handful of Cheerios to nibble on. Purees from a spoon are becoming increasingly passé as well - he’ll still take sweet potato mush from a spoon, but he’d rather have a hunk of it to gnaw on himself.

Yesterday at brunch with my parents, he was introduced to home fries (with the skins and the bits of rosemary painstakingly removed by yours truly) - YUM. Today at brunch (multiple brunches per weekend is all the reason I need to have visitors over) he nibbled on a piece of toasted brioche (with the crusts torn off). Also YUM. He is absolutely determined to master the whole Cheerio thing - once in his mouth, he knows how to chew and swallow (you don’t need teeth to chew a Cheerio), but the pincer grasp required to pick one up and get it there is still a bit of a challenge.

I’m looking forward to introducing him to noodles, and silken tofu. And re-introducing him to all the foods he currently knows only as purees - green beans, peas, squash, peaches, pears, apples. With a few exceptions (due to the prevalence of food allergies in my family), I can now make his dinner out of whatever we’re having for ourselves, which means less shopping. At restaurants, he can now have soft bread even if the kitchen doesn’t have a banana or an avocado they can slice up. It’s a wonderfully freeing thing, the ability to chew and swallow.

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.