I would have been shocked and dismayed if my kids hadn't been at least normal - you know, like me and DH and our friends...
But my first shock of how different that was from typical was when we tried to join a mom's group who walked every week, at about 8 months. DD was leaning out of her front pack to point at the wildlife. She had just started signing a little and was vocalizing 'bu! Bu!" for bird and "chu!" or "qua!" for squirrel. The other moms really resented it and started trying to prove how smart they were to me. To this day, we sometimes run into one of them and it's horribly awkward. It's not my imagination, they still point out that first day and how dumb she made their infants look.
I'm always questioning how much of a label she would need to be accurately described. She's just so, well, normal. Like me and my friends, who are all way out there. I'm very glad she can do easily find peers, but it makes it hard to set good expectations when we have no clue how far off the published ones are. We just have to follow her rather than really setting goals to reach for.
