Spontaneous Clapping

i think my child is secretly practicing new activities and then bringing them out to see if he can shock me. Yesterday, while on the changing table getting ready for bed, he started clapping his hands. Not just putting them together, or touching the fingers of one to the palm of the other (both of which I've seen him do before) but really clapping. Like, "hey i'm excited to have clean pants and go to bed." So i looked at him and smiled and then started clapping my hands. He gave me this, "WTF?" look as if to say, "I've never seen you do that before?"

I had a moment where i thought, oh my god my child is going to have to learn everything spontaneously. I haven't taken the time to teach him how to clap, how is he going to learn other things. Completely ignoring that a) he already clapped by himself, without my focused input at all and b) i have an amazing nanny that spends two days per week teaching him how to do these things and c) there's a cute 18month old running around showing him how to do a bunch of stuff and d) kids learn by observing stuff.

So moral of the story: mommy is going to freak out about everything. When its bad its really really bad and when its good its still anxiety provoking. I called my sister a week ago to ask if that sense of guilt that i'm not doing enough ever goes away. She left me a message that said, "Short answer,NO. You worry that you are/aren't breast feeding. that they aren't getting enough calories. that they are being exposed to the right books/games/toys etc. then you send them to preschool and worry about what other people are going to teach them and you try not to freak out when they come home to show you how cool it is to blow bubbles in milk or snort pixie sticks." I thought, shit what have i gotten myself into? the stuff you don't know/learn/pay attention to before jumping off this cliff.

happy mothering, ;)