SPS or Shitty Parent Syndrome

Lucas and I have just returned from my friend's daughter's first birthday party. Lucas is two weeks to the day younger than the birthday girl, and, while he behaved like a champ, the party has taken its toll on me.

First of all, eleven-and-a-half months is a horrible age to try and take the boy anyplace that doesn't have baby gates or shopping carts. Today, at least, my friend's house had neither. While Lucas is walking-ish, cruising easily along furniture and taking five or six free steps at a time before plopping back down, he is not walking efficiently enough to remain upright for a helpful length of time. He is also at the age where everything on the carpet must be tasted. At our house this includes but is not limited to: cat hair, human hair, loose threads, blades of grass, hair balls, crumbs, and electronic equipment. So I spent the better portion of the party holding him. Last time I checked, Lucas weighed about 1/5 of what I do, and that gets heavy after, oh, say, the first hour or so. Don't get me wrong--we "played" in the yard (read: crawled in the grass while Mommy ran interference between hand & mouth), and he had a great time climbing the stairs. But there were a lot of people there, a lot of kids in the preschool range, and when I put him down he tended to get underfoot. So I carried him, and now my back is paying for it. Keep the change.

Still, the party was fun, and the birthday girl performed angelically. Everyone kept asking if Lucas wanted anything to eat. "Are you SURE?" they prodded.
"Oh yes," I said, repeatedly, "he ate right before we came," which was mostly the truth. Partly. And I restrained myself when someone tried to hand him a Wheat Thin. I wanted to ask if they were trying to kill him, but I didn't--my brand of restraint. Ever since the incident a month ago--two months?--when Lucas choked on the Fruit Puff, Mommy has been gun-shy about self-feeding solid (especially crunchy) foods. I don't mean "choked," as in "he gagged a little and threw it up." I mean CHOKED. As in, it completely blocked his windpipe, he turned red, then purple, and only after four solid blows to the back did the offensive Puff fly across the dining room table. My aunt was visiting at the time, and during the brief crisis I actually had cause to say, "He's not BREATHING," which would have been followed by, "Call 9-1-1!" had the Puff not flown free as soon as the words were out. [By the way, it's good to know that no matter how long it sometimes takes to strap a squirming baby into his high chair, it only takes about point-zero seconds to whip him out of it when he's choking on a Fruit Puff.]

So when we got home from the party I put Lucas down for a nap and immediately started crying. I will blame this in part on my surging pregnancy hormones. "I am a SHITTY PARENT!" I wail. This is internal dialogue, incidentally--don't want to wake the baby. He's developmentally delayed in food! And he's not talking yet either or doing any gimmicky baby stuff. My friend Jim's little boy, Noah, is just a few months older than Lucas, but I think by this age he was waving and blowing kisses and who knows what else. Ah! We have failed the boy by not teaching him pony tricks! SHITTY PARENTS! I mean sometimes, if the moon is in the second house, and you do it for him a few times first, if you ask, "How big is Lucas?" and answer, "Sooo big!" while stretching your arms above your head, sometimes he's imitate you on the "So big" part. And Lucas reaches for people and things, but he doesn't point. And he can clap when he really feels like it, but he doesn't do peek-a-boo. Is it possible our boy is simple? What if--oh, ass-biting irony of ironies, Alanis--what if Lucas is speech delayed? Is that even possible?

As you have likely concluded, the biggest challenge Lucas faces at this point may well be the fact that his mother is a bit neurotic. Perhaps I'm just feeling slightly overwhelmed knowing that another is on the way when I haven't completely figured out what to do with this one yet. Oh Lucas. Oh, Angel Baby, please be patient with me. And I promise--cross my heart--none of this has anything to do with the fact that you still don't say, "Mama."