Hablas espanol?

At 10+ months, I've come to the very rational conclusion that Boden is already falling behind his peers and I've likely secured his future as an underachiever (I can already hear the disappointed and disapproving tone of his 7th grade math teacher during parent teacher conferences:"He has potential, but he just doesn't apply himself.").

I was talking with a gal at work today and the topic of our sons came up--it turns out that Max and Boden were both born in October, only a few weeks apart. We, of course, started barraging each other with questions only a parent of an infant would care about: "how many teeth does he have, is he walking, yet, how many times a day does he poop, how do you get the stains out of your cloth diapers"and the big one "is he sleeping through the night"...personal stats that I'm pretty certain I would not be sharing about myself to a new acquaintance.

The topic of daycare, of course, also came up and she was telling me they do cloth diapers at her son's daycare (which is unheard of). The daycare has their own cloth diapers for the tots and babes and washes them on-site, sending the child home in the parents' preferred diaper choice. Then, it gets better. I find out that this place is a Spanish/English bilingual daycare, all the employees are native Spanish speakers, and the philosophy of the school centralizes around the importance of family--along the lines of "it takes a village to raise a child". Fantastic! Where is this dream come true? I'm enrolling Boden tomorrow. Pop! That's when my bubble bursts--this daycare is in land far far away, in South Minneapolis, which might as well be in Florida because there is no way to make that commute possible on a regular basis. But, for a full day, I was fanatically trying to configure scenarios in my head on how I could accommodate Boden's attendance there.

So, at 10 months old this little Max is getting loved up by native Spanish speakers and his fair-skinned behind is being spared from the irritants of disposable diapers. As if that isn't enough to make me feel like I've already failed Boden, this gal proceeds to tell me that her husband is from Germany and he speaks only German to their son so he will learn the language. Holy Trilingual, Batman!

I try not to flash forward to what this means when these boys are 5 and Max has a good command of three languages while Boden is struggling his way through English. But, I'm feeling once again, that loving my child with everything I have just isn't going to be good enough. Making these grown-up decisions was hard enough when I was just concerned with myself. Then things became more complicated when we got dogs and now, adding a child--another little human who will have to live with whatever consequences fall his way because of the decisions I make now-- seems very overwhelming. In the simple, yet apropos words of Charlie Brown..."Good grief."