Free Bird

Almost every other mother I know tells me that they have certain benchmarks, particular milestones that they use to judge how they're doing as parents. For some people, these indicators come from books or pediatric development charts. For others, it's healthy competition -- "my sister's kid did XX at YY months, so if my kid does it by ZZ months, then I'll know we'll be okay."

I try to be a little more laid back than that, even though I myself am your classic Type A overachiever stress case heart attack waiting to happen. I mean, I still worry about stuff -- did we get her shots on time? are we feeding her enough? how long are her naps at school? dear God, what is that smell? -- but our main priority, really, is that she is happy. The rest of it will work itself out.

Which is why I am proud to announce that we have reached the absolute pinnacle in quality parenting over the weekend, and not only that, I actually managed to get it on "film" for once:

HELLS YEAH! ROCK AND ROLL! My work here is done.

Oh, and before I forget, here is the "prize-winning" picture that Shae and G (and apparently everyone else in the world except me) liked the best of the three school portraits:

This is a cropped version of the "real" picture, which is essentially the same except it's full-length and HER TEACHERS SENT HER INTO THE ROOM WITH HER SHOES UNBUCKLED. And I really can't talk about that any more without giving myself a stroke, so I'll stop now. (It doesn't look bad at all cropped, though, and in fact I like it better like this because you can see more of her face.)

My God, this kid is beautiful, absolutely beautiful. How in the hell did we get so lucky?