baby olympics
If you’ve not had a baby, chances are you’re blissfully unaware of the intense pressure that’s focused on an unwitting infant from the minute it’s born. There is a kind of clandestine ‘baby olympics’ that only mums know about and that babies compete in whilst blissfully unaware that anything is going on.
It starts off fairly innocuous; someone will ask you if your little one has started to smile yet and when you reply will offer information about when their child first flashed that precious, gummy grin. Things quickly escalate though, and before long you’ll find yourself lying that Junior is sleeping through the night just to escape the pitying looks proffered by those irritating mums of babies that have slept through practically since birth. Then you get to the stage we’re currently at; Bubs is almost 11 months old now and according to the rules of said ‘baby olympics’, he should at least be crawling, if not cruising around furniture and possibly, if you believe some competitive mums, tap dancing to the theme tune of the Tweenies. It’s unfortunate that Bubs’ refusal to get off his nappy-clad backside and move prevents me from lying about this one, because if one more person makes ‘The Face’ when I tell them that he’s still not crawling, I may have to commit a crime. I mean, if the average age for crawling is 10 months, then surely at 10 months three weeks he isn’t that far behind the game??
Which brings me to a more cheerful part of this little update – I’m convinced that what Bubs currently lacks in athleticism he makes up for in academia. OK so he’s not exactly reading Tolstoy quite yet but he does have what I think is quite an impressive repertoire of words for one so young. In addition to the usual ma-ma and da-da stuff he can say ‘cat’, ‘bad dog’, ‘light’, ‘toast’, ’sock’ and by far his favourite ‘that’ – which is short for ‘I want that!’ and gets used at every opportunity as an instruction to me to bring him things while he sits on his chubby little bum. In fact, considering that he’s a boy I don’t know why I’m surprised that he isn’t crawling yet. I mean, why would you go and get something yourself when you’ve got a perfectly good Mummy to go and get it for you?!
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About Claire
Hello! I’m Claire and welcome to MumUnplugged! I started this blog in 2008 following the birth of my son; I was bored on maternity leave from my job as a magazine editor, and besides feeling a pathological urge to just write something, I wanted to put my own experiences as a first time mum out there for others to share. I’m just a normal mum like any other – I have good days and bad days, days when I feel confident in my ability to raise this little human I created and others when I wonder why on earth I ever thought I could handle it! The most important thing I’ve learned from becoming a mum is that there’s nothing like advice from other mums who’ve been in your shoes – and I hope that by reading my experiences and those of others, visitors to MumUnplugged will find inspiration, advice and support for their journey through motherhood. Through my career in publishing I’ve also developed a passion for trend-spotting and tracking down the latest products so you’ll also find lots of news, reviews, fashion, topical features and much more. I really hope you enjoy the site – don’t forget to check out our forums (coming soon!) and keep your eyes peeled for great competitions and giveaways. If there’s anything you’d like to see on MumUnplugged then I’d love to hear from you – email mumunplugged@googlemail.com, follow me on Twitter, check out the Facebook page - or just leave me a comment!