It's Fall, Now.

I can tell because when I looked at the weekly weather forcast, I was looking eagerly for warm days rather than for cool ones.

Elliot had his 1 year doctor appointment today. He is perfectly fine, and was a complete trooper about his shots--barely cried. The nurse was tremendously impressed.

One thing I have realized about infant doctor appointments is that it's very hard not to feel as though they're the parenting equivalent of report card day. Motherhood is so vague and nebulous; it's like going to one of those hippy colleges where there are no grades and everyone just hopes, at the end of the class, that you've had a meaningful experience. This is weird for me. I'm a big one for grades: I didn't know how much I relied on them until I started doing this Very Important Thing and there wasn't anyone to evaluate my performance. Well, I take that back: everyone is always evaluating maternal performance. We mothers, we are judged a lot. But usually it's just by random people, or even by intimate people whose opinions still don't ultimately matter.

But doctors! Doctors are official and important. I feel like their opinion should count. But one of the things I like about our pediatrician is that he seems to absolutely forswear any sort of gushing or evaluating. He's low key--he's older, and he's seen lots of fads come and go, and he figures that probably it doesn't matter hugely if you nurse six months or twelve or two years, or if you co-sleep or don't, or feed exclusively organic foods or don't. He seems to figure that most babies turn out okay. It's very comforting, and I think he is quite right.

Still, every appointment he looks Elliot over good humoredly and says, "There you go, Elliot! You pass." And the over achiever in me always thinks, always always thinks: "Does that mean he gets...that I get...an A?"