My Blessedly Average Toddler

Ingrid turned 13 months on Sept. 17.  Technically, she is a toddler, even though she still cruises along furniture, babbles and tries to eat crayons instead of draw with them.  According to her pediatrician, she is perfectly normal, healthy and well-adjusted and for that I am so grateful.  I know parents that don't have such an easy road, and I count my lucky stars every night.

Besides her dimples and her enthusiasm for balls, Ingrid's most distinguishing feature is her size.  Ingrid is big.  As in, off the charts for height (33 inches) and in the 96 percentile for weight (24.6 pounds).  Because she's so huge, people out in public assume she's older than she is and thus say things to me like, "Don't worry, she'll walk soon."* I nod and say I'm not worried, but my behavior betrays me. Instead of eye-rolling my way across the Huffington Post's parenting page, I read it religiously.  Same with BabyCenter updates, any baby-themed coverage in the NY Times Well blog and all the damn Slate pieces about how creating spreadsheets of your child's behavior patterns make you a good mom.

I fall victim to all this anxious consumption; my husband, however, does not. When Ingrid is a little slow to walk, it's hard for me not to assume I'm doing something wrong, that her laziness is not somehow a black mark on my mothering card.  But when Erik looks at the situation, he just sees Ingrid.  He totally parents without narrcissism. I don't know if this is because he's just very gifted at being a father, or if he has crazy low expectations of himself. I think it's the later.  That sounds harsh, but it's true: As long as Erik keeps Ingrid alive and relatively happy on his watch, he thinks he's done a good job parenting.  Most mothers I know don't judge their efforts so generously. With Pinsanity, public debate about parenting philosophies and social media that allows us to voyeur into other people's domestic spheres, we start to believe there's a right way to be parenting, a formula for mothering, and if we get it wrong there will be terrible consequences.  I have my unoriginal theories about why this loss of confidence is so rampant, especially among a certain educated set of women, but I think regardless of its cause the result is the same: We're driving ourselves crazy.

Here's 13 month old Ingrid.  Blessedly average.

I talk to my mom throughout the day. When Ingrid is being particularly crabby and I have a work deadline, Mimi Jen is quick to offer some solutions: Put her in the pack n' play with some toys and leave her alone.  Turn on the TV.  Put her in the crib with her books and shut the door. Now, these suggestions sound to me like the epitome of unenlightened Baby Boomer advice.  Isn't she worried about screen time? What about mixing up her sleep associations with the crib? What if she gets lonely and thinks I'm abandoning her or not meeting her needs?  My mother's response to all these questions is the same: Well, you turned out fine.

I did (in theory).  I certainly don't remember if my mom put me in a play pen while she made lunch for the other kids.  It wasn't a big deal, and doubt she thought twice about it.  It's the not thinking twice thing that makes me envious of my mom's generation. I don't believe in screen time, and I don't think play pens are super healthy, but I do think it's healthy to have a mother who is pleased with herself, and confident in her abilities. A mother who isn't ashamed to say that her child is totally, completely, blessedly average.

Back to Blogging

I haven't blogged since 2009, when I moved from Germany to North Carolina. Back then my blog was a way to write about life abroad, keep my family and friends abreast of my expat existence, and kill some time as I tried to illegally download American television shows. It was fun, and, moreover, easy.  When I started the blog in 2008, I didn't feel the need to justify why I was writing; I moved to another country and it was just something silly to do.  But now there are mommy blogs and cooking blogs, fashion blogs and lifestyle blogs, blogs that get people book deals and TV shows,  etc. According to an email that I just got, Gwyneth Paltrow has been blogging for five years! My point is, it feels much scarier to be dipping my toe into the proverbial Internet waters. I don't recall ever worrying if I had something novel to add to the cacophony of the web back in 2008. I was just impressed with myself when I figured out how to hyperlink text.

In the five years since I last blogged, I went to gradate school, bought a house and survived the first (and second, third, and fourth) years of marriage. I also had a baby.  Ingrid Rosemary joined us last August, and for the last 13 months, I've been a work-from-home mom. It's only been five years, but motherhood and married life is a time warp.  Sometimes it feels like it's been a whole century.

When Ingrid was five months old, I was still giving her a bath in her baby bathtub.  I loved her tub; she looked like Cleopatra floating down the Nile in it.  She sat in a reclined position, and at five months had the sort of luxurious rolls of inner thigh fat only an ancient monarch could have.  I was rinsing her hair and she was splashing me when I started crying.  Erik came in and I explained that I was so so so sad, because 100 years wouldn't be enough time with this girl. It all goes much too fast, even on the days when you look at the clock and realize it's only 1 pm, and she won't nap, and you can't legally put her to bed until at least 7, and if you have to read "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" one more time you might start day drinking. Even those days end too quickly. So, like roughly 15 million other American moms, I'm starting a blog so I can make time go a little slower on some days, and faster on others.