The Parenting Competition

Parenting is a competition.

mom 1: "well, I ONLY buy my baby whole, organic foods."
mom 2: "well, I only buy MY BABY gluten-free products."

me: "... sometimes maddie eats dirt. but that's organic and gluten-free, riiiight?"


After traveling to visit my good friend from High school, and her fiance, and their dozens of dogs (just kidding. it was only three dogs, but to maddie, it seemed like a lot more.) Maddie learned the word puppy.
One day at home, while reading a book, she looked at a cartoon dog and started shrieking "puppeee puppee pupeee!!!"
To which I thought, "Holy s^#*&. My baby is a genius."
Because you have to understand, when I first met my baby, the fact that she pooped 10 times a day was a big accomplishment. Now my little poop machine is actually COMMUNICATING with me, and that blows my mind.

So I went to the bookstore today to buy her some more books to try and expand her vocabulary, cuz I'm like a super good mom and all that. (I'm not. maddie is currently outside eating more dirt.)
And that's where I met that mom.

first you should know that all babies are fascinated with each other. they can't help it. They just love other chunky short people like themselves.
So while maddie and the other baby were exchanging slobber-covered blocks, I made small talk with other baby's mom.
Me: "your baby is soo cute!" (he wasn't. that's just something everyone is obligated to say.)
her: "thanks. did you know that he's in the 99th percentile for height?"
me: "wow!" (I didn't really care. Maddie is off the charts for her height, too, but after working at the Crisis Nursery, I've realized that a lot of kids are somehow in the 99th percentile for height...which makes no sense.)
her: "yeah. he's like so smart. My friend is a psycho child behavior neuro surgeon and she keeps telling me that he is SO advanced."
I watched as he stuck a block up his nose. me: "yeah, he seems super smart..."

But let's be honest. no toddler is crazy smart. They are all just super poop machines, and we as parents have to justify that they are crazy smart to make ourselves feel better when they do really dumb things that drive us all crazy. But can't we all just admit that instead of comparing our kids to one another?