Friday, September 25, 2009

Parenting in Public

As someone who was never particularly baby-crazy, it has come as a big surprise to me how much people loooooove babies. They want to coo over them and touch them (which freaks out ol' germaphobe me). Now, I don't deny that my little guy (LG) is absolutely wonderful and adorable, but really.

This week I got some interesting remarks.

1. From the middle-aged cashier in Walgreen's. After she cooed over how adorable he looked, sleeping in his wrap all snuggled against my chest, she said, "You're spoiling him!"

2. From the elderly mason at the Scottish Rite Masonic Center. "He doesn't sleep in your bed, does he? That's a no-no!" I'd like to see him try and transfer LG to his bassinet. It's always easy to give advice when you don't have a squalling infant voting on your behavior.

3. A random mom at the pancake house. "Does he sleep through the night?" When I admitted that he had, he just doesn't do it often, she practically burst into tears. "I need to hug you! You know my pain!" And we commiserated on hearing other parents of little babies talk about how their angels sleep for 12-hour stretches and agreed that they're all lying.

Well, look at this sweet guy. Who wouldn't want to spoil him?

So as much as I would be suited to having a baby who really prefers some alone time, thank you very much, I am going to be taking the long view of infancy. He's only this small for a short amount of time, and if wearing him and snuggling with him in bed (safely!) are spoiling him, then we'll just have to deal with one very spoiled toddler. God help us.

2 comments:

Kelly said...

...because you can really spoil an infant by carrying him. Geez Denise, you should be making him roll everywhere he goes. ((sigh)) don't you just loooove unsolicited advice?

Denise Schiller said...

LOL Especially unsolicited advice that's based on ideas from about 50 years ago!