Joy

The last few days with Daughter have been a real joy. My siblings were here and as a result, my little girl has enjoyed being the centre of attention. We've had so, so much fun.

Daughter has been experimenting with happy noises - much to our delight - and getting much better at going to bed. I've found that the less I think about parenting and the more time I spend pulling silly faces, the easier life is.

So that's my goal - forget all about milestones, all about books, sleeping regularly, getting 'enough' sleep etc. As my wise mother told me, if Daughter is tired she'll sleep, regardless of where she is.

It is really hard to stop thinking about what she should be doing by which age when you're bombarded with messages telling you which formula your child should have at which age, which weaning foods are suitable etc. But today, Daughter stole toasted tea cake from my plate in a cafe and munched it without batting an eyelid. She picked up the food, put it in her mouth, chewed and swallowed. We promptly bought her some rusks after that, despite their 7+ month age-tag.

Even if I don't get enough sleep at night, I'm just going to zonk out during the day, even if it means I won't get everything done.

I know I swore I'd rip up the books before, but the 'information' about how you should raise your child is so structured into every aspect of our society that it's impossible to block out completely. I'll do my best to take it all with a pinch of salt from now on, now that I've seen how fun things are when you don't worry.

Teething

And so it begins.

Aside from being used as a chew toy, this poses some interesting dilemmas.

I hate brushing my own teeth (I do it, clearly) because even the smell of mint makes me wretch. The idea of cleaning someone else's actually makes me feel slightly nauseous. I don't know why I have this aversion to all things mint, but there we go.

I think Husband will like this though. He often spoke of feeling useless where Daughter was concerned because he couldn't feed her to comfort her when she was crying, so that he now has something he can do with her that I honestly can't, I hope it'll show  him that he's absolutely NOT useless..

Since Daughter seems to be sleeping and dinner seems to be ready, I'm going to go and sit down at the table for the first time in months, but will try and post some of the interesting teething things I've found tomorrow.

Growing up

Milestones, they call them. Developmental milestones.

The system* would have you believe that they are to be reached at a specific time by children who are developing at the normal pace. I've come to think of the whole thing like the A1 north-bound - everyone is pushing on in the same direction, but in reality, we'll not all reach Newcastle at the same time.

Most of us are travelling by car on or around the speed limit - we're hitting Newark and our first words as and when we should. But as it's an A road and not a motorway, all kinds of other traffic is allowed to travel our path too. You get tractors - steady and strong - classic motor cars which perhaps don't have more than 4 gears but are intolerably beautiful, not to mention the occasional and eccentric horse and cart. They won't get there as quickly as the rest of us but as its the destination that matters and not the journey time, it isn't really an issue.

Except.

People get competitive. We seem to be conditioned to treat all of these milestones as markers in a race. Daughter didn't smile until she was 8 weeks - 2 weeks older than most babies. Friend's toddler didn't gain weight as fast as expected which caused health bods to worry and question his development.

Things seem to have to happen to kids so quickly - they have to sleep in their own bed from day one, be away from Mummy from the time she's ready to go back to work, and learn to smile, to talk, to crawl all according to some sort of magical calendar. When we panic if our children don't reach these milestones at the same time - if not faster - than they're supposed to, is it any wonder they're growing up too quickly? We're competitive, so we push our children forwards in an effort to say to the world, 'We are better. Our child is better.'

Just a thought...

*I'm not one of these 'fight the system' morons, I just don't know what else to call the... thing (well, system) that our growing kids are supposed to adhere to.