get out the way

The first year of a baby's life is so wonderfully unpredictable, isn't it? I had many struggles with baby Julia (I like to call it Clueless New Mom Syndrome and I think I had it worse than anyone ever in the history of CNMS) but one of my biggest conundrums was her ever-evolving nap "schedule" and all the loads of advice coming at me from all directions. And those other directions too. I remember when she downgraded from three naps to two I was SO frustrated and befuddled as to why it was happening. I was too caught up in the small picture (a! rigid! schedule!) to take an adult step back and look at the big picture: babies don't grow up into adults with thrice daily built into their day-to-day grind (although! a nice thought, right? ) ... the naps slowly get dropped. It seems so simple in retrospect but the learning curve of that first year is steep (like taking a sip of water from a fire hose! some might cliché) and every baby is entitled to a different temperament and your second baby will throw you a wildly different year than your first baby did and so on but there's something about the first baby that's just ... well, something. Profundity in spades today, folks.

But I'm not here to wax chatty about baby drama or even about sleep schedules (although - I can say without a hint of irony - that it is something I could talk about for hours, sadly). Nope - I want to talk about something even more sexy.

throw back head cackle. Curve ball!!!

Let's talk about milestones and mobility.

I remember Simon's mom saying that a mobile baby is a happy baby and holy true. So true. Julia took her sweet, sweet time to start crawling (10 months) which was okay because my hands were free to cart her wherever her highness might desire to be carted. Sebastian was up and slithering long before his 1/2 birthday but Theo! Oh, Theo. If literate Theo is reading this: know that I loved you through it but 7-11 months was a dark and stormy time of your life. Your frustration was almost tangible as you sat and threw vocal pity parties about not being able to move and were only happy on my hip during your waking hours. Happily, as soon as the clouds parted, and the rain cleared, and you figured it out at 11 months old .. it was the brightest and sunniest day of my mom career. Your personality transformed into something that didn't trigger dangerous waves of anxiety on the hour which was um, nice. I guess it left a bit of an impression or what some might call PTSD because my hands got clammy just typing about it.

The tangent was necessary, I'm sorry. I had to pave the way for Phoebe's seemingly humdrum milestone that she mastered last week ...

I don't know what's in her mouth ... maybe she popped, lost, and ate her third tooth all in the same second. Yes, let's roll with that.

Oh, you better believe I was so excited (the weeks leading up to her takeoff were scarily reminiscent of those months with Theo and I was starting to sweat profusely) that I put together a grainy video montage complete with dated ditty soundtrack.


It's okay if you don't watch the entire minute to the "eat a piece of lint" bitter end. I showed it to Simon and even his eyes were darting as he was looking for an escape route.

And while life isn't perfect, of course! It's whole bleep of a lot better with a happy baby sprint-laughing toward the stairs while they watch you sprint-freak toward them during dinner prep vs. an angry baby doing anything at all. Bring on the baby-proofing and all the headaches people like to warn you about a crawling child ... bring them on strong.

{I'm sure your baby has been mobile since 4 months? 5 months? And I hope you celebrated appropriately and made them a fancy YouTube too. You both deserve it.}