Day 190: In pursuit of progress

I lurk frequently at a message board for moms of babies the same age as Mads. It's a good place to brag or blow off some steam, depending on what kind of day you're having. I've said in the past, though, and I'll say it again, it's also a good way to make yourself question your parenting skills. Some of these babies are already sitting, crawling, talking, standing on their own... I would assume these accounts were greatly exaggerated if it weren't for the fact that they are often accompanied by photographic proof. I look at the picture of little Johnny standing bravely in front of his dad's open arms, then over at Maddie, flat on her back happily licking the lid of a shoebox. It makes me wonder if I should be doing more to encourage her progress. I don't actually care all that much, cause as every mother of an "unmotivated" baby is quick to tell you, when they're graduating from high school it won't matter who crawled first (that's kind of our mantra). But still, I've been on a kick these days to get her going. And so, last night was her first swimming class!

Things didn't start out well when Maddie showed up wearing the same swimsuit as another baby. She was mortified. I told her that's what you have to expect when you shop at The Gap. But they got better from there. Fernando and she were crammed in a kiddie pool along with about 20 other babies, some screaming, most just looking vaguely confused. Now, I'm not going to boast, but I'm pretty sure she's the strongest 6-month old swimmer ever; she kicked her little legs and waved her little arms like she'd been born doing it (hmm...). It turns out she also swallowed about a gallon of pool water, which she proceeded to throw up in a screaming fit of mucousy hysterics afterwards. But, it's a small price to pay to realize your life's calling at such a young age, no? Do they have baby triathlons, I wonder? She'd have to work on the whole cycling and running bit, of course. I'll have to look into it.

So the great swimming experiment is thus far a raging success. The same cannot be said for our attempts at sign language. Baby sign language is all the rage these days, the idea being that your baby won't have to know how to speak in order to communicate with you. My hope is not quite as grand: I just want to cut down on all the crying. Anyways, we picked a few words to start on: "milk," "sleep," and "all done." The problem is that when she's screaming for her bottle or screaming for bed it's hard to hold her attention long enough to show her the signs. She's starving, and I'm sitting there holding the bottle in front of her with one hand and acting like I'm milking a cow with the other - it's just cruel, taunting her like that. Meanwhile she's looking at me as if to say, "For god's sake, just give me the damn bottle!" The only one she seems to enjoy is the sign for "all done," but I think that's just because it resembles jazz hands, and who doesn't like that?

Sounds like nap time is over...