Milestones

Everyone out there has information to share with you on what your baby should be doing at any given time. All the baby websites, all the blogs, all the books. Your baby should be doing this now, or that now.

And there's a subtle (and often not-so-subtle) competition that goes on between moms. "Oh, my (NAME) did (ACTIVITY) when he was (AT LEAST SEVERAL MONTHS YOUNGER THAN YOUR BABY IS)." I even see this on blogs.

I freely admit that I let myself get sucked into all of this. And even when the website/blogger/mom is just stating a fact, not comparing, I find myself anxiously looking at Elle and thinking "Well, X baby did X at nine months, and you're ten, and you still don't do X. Why not?"

I need to stop.

It's not fair to Elle. Elle is a good-natured, alert, friendly, inquisitive, healthy baby-- who happens to be on the late side, so far, for nearly all of her milestones. Not so late that her ped is worried something's wrong, but as a friend said, "When there's a curve, someone's got to be on the back side of it."

Elle's on the back side of the curve.

This doesn't mean she's going to grow up to a bright future of asking "Would you like fries with that?" until she retires. It means she's a late bloomer, physically. (I should note that I'm not the least bit worried about her verbal development. For those readers who know me in real life, you're not at all surprised by that.) I was a late bloomer as well, so she's taking after me, poor muffin.

I need to take a breath, and not worry about what other babies are doing. They're doing their own thing, and probably their mothers worry about milestones too. Worry is the price of motherhood, I think.

I'm blessed with a fantastic little girl, who will do things in her own way and in her own time, and she'll get there like everyone else. That needs to be my mantra.

***

Complete non-sequitur: I seem to have chipped one of my front teeth, and I've no idea how. It's not a big chip, but big enough that it's rough on my tongue or my lip, which of course means I can't stop feeling my tooth.

I so love going to the dentist. Oh, well.