"Sven is to play Mr. Mistoffelees, you don't say!"

Before Suttie’s arrival in this world, I had a serious plan for his life. It went something like this: moving into his own room at 6 weeks, losing the pacifier at 3 months, exhibiting a genius-level vocabulary at one year, starting private school at 5, attending Columbia at 18, graduating from Harvard Medicine at 28, and buying me a house in the south of France at 36. But not 3 and half months into his life, that plan has already suffered some major setbacks. First of all, Suttie still sleeps in our room, and I don’t want that to change anytime soon. While I was pregnant, I read numerous parenting books by Dr. Know-It-All and Professor Never-Had-Kids that suggested that a child shouldn’t stay in his or her parents’ room past two months because of attachment issues. And it seems that they were partly right. For, while I think Suttie could sleep anywhere and care very little, I am panicked by the thought of him sleeping more than a foot away. So, he’s stayed…to the point that he only has inches before he outgrows his bassinet. Now, before you give me some sage, oh so cliché advice about letting him spread his wings and explore the world apart from Mom and Dad, I must tell you that I don’t care, so don’t waste your keystrokes. I may be a new mom, but I’ve quickly discovered what is perhaps the most important thing that anyone can understand about parenthood. It’s fleeting. One day, he’s laying in his bassinet, clutching a burp cloth and saying a word that sounds like “leg” but obviously means something else entirely, and the next he’s driving away from me in car that his father and I bought with the hopes that it would see him through the next four years of college. So, I’m done listening to the books. He may not need to lie beside me to sleep, but I need him to. And for now, that’s reason enough.

The same goes for his pacifier. I read somewhere that I should take his passy away before his 4-month birthday to prevent him from developing a relationship with it that would be hard to break. And again, with a few months of motherhood under my belt, I cry “Fie!” There are many times in the course of the day when I literally need to stick a plug in my child. If it weren’t for his silicone friends, we would have no groceries, never attend a church service, avoid group gatherings, and, for all extensive purposes, be veritable shut-ins. If you see my son with a passy in his mouth at age 5, then, by all means, pull me aside and gently tell me that I’ve missed my cue. But, until then, the passy lives to comfort and quiet for another day.

So, I have a new plan for my son’s future: play it by ear. If the only words that he can get out at his first birthday are “more” and “food” (a likely verbal combination), then great! At least he’s clearly expressing what is most important to him. And, if at 18, he tells Sutton and me that he wants to go to a state school or barber college or join a traveling revival of Cats with his boyfriend, Sven, then that’s fine, too. The point is that any plans that you make for your children are, at best, tentative. And you better start being flexible, or you’re sure to break.