Baby Gate Hell

That's when you have four different types of baby gates, and you can't get any of them to fit the crazy mismatched stairwells of your 150-year-old house.

Which is where I am right now. And I'm the mechanical one in my family.

I need the baby gate fairy godmother, the one who swoops down on your home, measuring tape and drill in hand, get those gates to behave, yes, the ones that come in the box with 5000 screws, and yes, the ones that come in hard plastic that doesn't bend to the whims of this aged house, to the walls that don't quite line up, and makes it all go away.

That's one. We're back to lists.

Two: today, my dear friend, whom I won't name in case her boss reads my blog, which is very unlikely, came over at 9.30, with a coffee and two pastries in hand, and didn't leave till 2.30.

Exactly: we played hooky, did no work, and more amazingly, spent five hours talking. Can I tell you how revived I feel? Can I tell you I haven't spent this long catching up with a friend, enough hours to really get into stuff, to circle back, to cry, to laugh, in I-can't-remember-how-long?

Can I tell you I feel like the luckiest woman in the world?

Three: people I know are chatting about Katie Allison Granju's Babble.com article, The Overparenting Crisis, in which in her trademark voice of Tennessee bombast, Katie reminds us of what many of us know: not to get sucked in to the culture of competition. Not to worry too much. Not to keep comparing our kids to others.

Resisting competition isn't just a politically progressive stance. That would make it out to be too external, although it's a worthy cause to critique the crazy levels of competition out there, and the article has its share of moms who admit they went into debt to buy a high-end stroller (although I often wonder where these moms are, because I've never met one, but perhaps I travel in very different circles, where the competition is not about material objects but about other forms of cultural status).

Resisting the competition is important because it's the only way to stay sane. If you're sucked in to social competition, you can't win, you're always unsteadily in the game, you're always waiting to be upended since of course, there's always someone with more. Always.

I've always believed this, but with a delayed child, I'm learning all the more to keep my eyes on my own mat, as they say in yoga. I'm learning not to look at other children and compare, because it only makes me sad. It takes my focus off the amazing micro-strides that the baby is making. She can bend her knees. She made a "mmm" sound today. She's a tad closer to pulling herself up to sitting. Perhaps having a child who lives at one far end of the spectrum makes it easier to opt out of the craziness. Maybe that's a really good thing.

Four. My resolution, after rereading: call in some reinforcements on the baby gate situation. Now. Will report back.