So it's been about a month since I've posted anything, and I've caught some slack for it. Here's my official apology.
And here's my latest column: (I have two other columns to post from weeks past).
My husband recently announced that his co-worker’s daughter — who is two weeks younger than our 9-month-old son — was not yet crawling.
"But she has a tooth!" he added.
He immediately rubbed his index finger along Brody’s top and bottom gums, searching for any sign of enamel struggling to poke through.
Feeling a bit assaulted, Brody pushed his daddy’s hand away as Duane declared, "No teeth yet!"
And so the comparisons continue.
And so the comparisons continue.
Brody may be a little short, but he’s showing signs of early walking. He doesn’t have any teeth — though we’ve blamed his crankiness on teething pain for months — but he’s learning to make new sounds every day. And since his birth, we’ve proudly announced that his 9 pounds, 12 ounces made him the biggest baby in the nursery.
I like to think of these comparisons as "baby de-briefings," and it’s an activity I share with first-time dad, co-columnist and desk mate Mark St. John Erickson nearly every day. I can tick off most of 7-month-old Owen’s statistics as well as my own son’s.
But when a co-worker quietly referred to our stat swapping as a competition, it threw me off balance.
Surely, I’m not the "Toddlers & Tiaras"-style buxom blond who buys backless formal gowns and fake teeth for her 7-year-old pageant princess. And I haven’t had the chance to yell, "Hustle up, son!" at Brody as he chases a soccer ball toward the goal.
But I suspect the first step toward membership in the shoutin’, growlin’, yell-at-the-ref parents’ club can come much earlier than that.
Just minutes after birth, doctors award the very first score comparing your child’s physical appearance and response to that of other newborn babies. And that first tinge of pride swells when the doctor scribbles a 9 — 10 being perfect — on your new baby’s chart.
For my husband and me, the accolades continued as a steady stream of family and friends filtered through our hospital room for four days, counting fingers and toes, gushing over Brody’s enormous jowls and stroking his dark mop of hair.
And as nervous as we were to be new parents, Duane and I knew we were miles ahead of the cursing couple two rooms away.
We had more to gush about when the pediatrician placed Brody in the 90th percentile for height and weight. This was definitely the right path to his future success.
When Brody started rocking on his hands and knees, our excitement over his development surpassed any focus on growth. It took weeks of fits and starts, inches at a time, before he scooted across his bedroom floor so fast it took my breath away.
And now, as we watch him grab, stand up and step from one piece of furniture to the next, we’re sure that he’s months ahead of his peers in the pursuit of walking.
These milestones and his happy smiles are the only signs we have that we’re not failing dreadfully at the mystic art of parenting. But there’s also a whisper of fear behind them. Now that we’re largely past the risk of SIDS, we see autism, attention deficit disorder and developmental delays hovering as question marks every time Brody stumbles off course. There’s also some comfort, however, in knowing that someone else’s baby took that same step backward.
But is it obsessive competition? No. Parents of similarly aged babies are likely the only ones who can really understand your feeling of triumph at an inch added to height or the fact that your baby fell over and didn’t cry this time.
And only they can join you in wondering exactly who would win a baby wrestling match — (Answer: Brody may have the edge with his Buddha-sized belly, but lanky little Owen has mastered his commando-style escape plan).
