Narcissistic Personality Disorder

I've never been one of those moms to closely compare developmental milestones against the calendar, you know, as long as I can find at least one obscure source that indicates he's sufficiently ahead on every single one. You can try to tell me it was gas but I am confident that B's first real smiles started around 3 weeks. Since then I've been convinced that he is a social genius and destined to become a great leader (hopefully of a Fortune 500 company or of the free world rather than some sort of weird cult with a suicide pact). Once this momentous milestone was behind us, I patiently awaited the next big social development, laughing! Well, here we are at almost 4 months and I've only heard B laugh a handful of times. According to some sources, he should be full of delightful baby giggles whenever I make a silly face or zerbert his big belly. Oh.dear.god. There must be something wrong.

Turns out there is in fact something wrong. Like a stand-up comic writing my next show I performed a careful accounting of what elicited giggles from my audience in the past. As I thought about it I realized that there is only one thing that has ever made B laugh. Himself. His biggest laughs so far have been at himself in the mirror or when he finally was able to fit a substantial part of my mom's sweater in his own mouth.

"HAHAHA mirror baby has a mustache. Gets me every time!"

Naturally, I feared the worst and frantically read up on Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I was all but ready to make a diagnosis until I read about a new milestone that B has not yet reached.

Sometime around 12-18 months babies come to the realization that the face in the mirror is actually their own. Before that time they just think it's some kid who follows them around all the time. Phew! B is not completely self-absorbed he just thinks that baby who pops up everywhere is hilarious.

"So we meet again."

I guess if I start stealing jokes from mirror baby's repertoire then I'll start getting laughs out of B too. The only diagnosis left to make is that I'm not as funny as I think I am.

"Still waiting for you to say something funny."