The unexpected, yet most meaningful milestones

With a little one there are many expected “milestones” that we all look forward to: rolling over, crawling, walking, sleeping through the night, etc . . .  These are often exciting and moving and sentimental, though sometimes they don’t seem quite so noteworthy or happen so gradually you don’t know when the real “first” was (as happened with crawling for us—J moved so much just rolling and scooting and pulling himself EVERYWHERE that it was hard to tell when it really qualified as crawling and didn’t make any practical difference).  Or sometimes something doesn’t happen as the books and folklore say it should and it becomes a sort of dreaded milestone as your bitterness builds (sleeping through the night in this house; still not something J has attained).  But for me there have also been other major milestones—often even more meaningful.  These ones were not as expected, not in the baby books, and much more personal.

Here are some of my favorite firsts:

• following a direction/command (it was just shocking when we first communicated with words—when we could say wave and Joseph understood us!) 
• being able to walk holding my hand (this was huge for me—it felt so intimate and grownup)
• playing in the mud
• putting one of his projects on the fridge
• checking out library books
• story hour at the library
• saying “I uv you”
• noticing and asking about his peepee ;-)
• doing chores and allowance (He has been gathering the eggs sporadically for quite awhile, but now he is getting even more into it.  Yesterday he really enjoyed using the pitchfork to clean out the barn and give the animals new hay.  He also sometimes sets the table.  If he does his chores he gets a dime!)
• make a purchase by himself with his own money (Brad and Joseph has date at the new Mickey D’s in town and J wanted more chicken nuggets, so Brad sent him up all by himself!  He was sooo proud of himself and telling me all about it when he came home.)
• making his own plans with friends (he is always making plans for playmates and sleepovers with his friends.  We don’t have the time to keep up with all his plans!)

And right now we are reading our first chapter book!!!  Recently we have read, cover to cover, two huge story treasuries so I figured this was the next step.  I brought a couple home and soon enough J was following me around begging me to read Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox.  We are both enjoying it and I love that his reading choices are getting more and more interesting.  After all, story time is for mommy too!