Competition and babies...

...go together like cops and robbers. I was going to say maple syrup and ham, but the baby competition is nowhere near that delicious.

I have a sibling with developmental disabilities, which I realize now was a really good lesson in enjoying babies for who they are and where they are. I had no idea how terribly competitive mothers are. Example: at the vet, picking up Niles, a woman asks me how old A is. I tell her and she says, "He's a big boy."

I say, "Yes, he was almost sixteen pounds at his four month checkup." I wasn't bragging. I was being quantitative and I haven't gotten him weighed lately.

She says, "I have a five-month-old daughter. She was sixteen and a half pounds at her four month checkup. 97th percentile! I told the doctor, 'I swear I'm not feeding her every time she cries.'" I felt the compulsion to simultaneously explain that it was actually 3 and a half months when A had his checkup and that we're breastfeeding and not formula feeding so we're still feeding on cue. There was probably a small lecture about breastfeeding in there too. I squashed it all.

The baby competition is something fierce. How big is just the start. There's the wildly popular "Is he sleeping through the night?" because hours of sleep is absolutely correlated to superior parenting. There's also the always nebulous, "Is he a good baby?" No, he's a bad baby; he's been hanging out with the Baby Mafia and they have some shady money-laundering activities going on. He's not colicky, but he's also not willing to wallow in his own crapulance.

I can't imagine the competitiveness that's going to happen once he can crawl, walk, and talk. I'm not having any of it. I'm pretty sure I have the cutest, sweetest baby in the universe and I'm pretty sure every other parent feels the same way.