Little Girl, Big Day

Every now and then, I forget that my life, what I'm doing by staying at home to raise Caitrin, is a choice. A little voice in my ear has really been getting me down, telling me I'm not as important as mothers who have children AND work outside the home and definitely not as important as mothers who are also actresses or celebrities of some other type. This voice wants me to think that if I dropped off the earth today, no one would even notice, let alone remember me. I've been plagued by these feelings of worthlessness for a few weeks now, and it's kept getting progressively worse.

Then yesterday, when the weight was getting so heavy I could barely breathe, Caitrin had a day that reminded me that I'm EXACTLY where I need to be. First, she has two new teeth coming! It's funny, she got her first two relatively early, at 6 1/2 and 7 1/2 months, but then no more in all this time! On Monday I noticed the top front right one had broken through, and then yesterday while we were playing "airplane" I saw the top front left!

Second, Caitrin's been doing the "wounded soldier" crawl since she was 7 months old, but had never done "normal" knee-hand crawling. I wasn't worried because the "wounded soldier" is actually recognized by pediatricians as one of several acceptable forms of crawling. Then last evening, I was getting ready to put Caitrin in the bath and instead of trench-crawling behind me into the bathroom, she got up on her hands and knees and went all the way from the floor by her crib and into the bathroom as far as the tub! Afterward I showed her now to stand up in her crib by holding onto the front rail. I kept my hands on top of hers to catch if needed, but she did all the work.

So I was bouncing off the walls when Sean came home, telling him about all of Caitrin's antics, and she decided to show off for Daddy! She crawled for real all through the kitchen and living room, and when we were sitting in the living room playing with her, she suddenly grabbed the end table and stood up by holding onto it all by herself for over a minute! If I had been doing any of the things the world considers "important," I'd have missed it all. I'm so happy I made this choice.