The Inevitables: Children's Milestones that the Parenting Books Forgot

Parenting books are all about chronicling children's milestones. The experts advise on what they are and when to expect them. The doctors break them up into neat and tidy categories: the emotional, the physical and the social. Your child's development outlined in a rather straightforward fashion.

But there are other less celebrated milestones that parents are left to discover on their own. It’s uncanny how universal they are.

To our delight or dismay, every parent on the planet will deal with every child in the world doing one or more of the following with pure and utter abandon. I call them, "The Inevitables of Parenthood":

1) Riding their cat or dog like a horse.

2) Throwing away a cellphone, important piece of mail or remote control.

3) Screaming &@#! in public.

4) Using their head like a wrecking ball.

5) Deciding night is day {never the reverse}.

6) Eating dirt, paper, paint and/or glue.

7) Throwing or otherwise engaging with their own poop.

8) Glomming onto some television show, character and/or song that you find abhorrent.

9) Ensconcing themselves in toilet paper.

10) Kicking their father in the balls.

11) Dining on pet food.

12) Sticking a small object so far into an orifice as to render it unretrievable without professional know-how.

13) Doing any or all of these things repeatedly, despite your best efforts to cajole, plead, order, admonish and/or otherwise deter them.

If you’re a parent and these things haven’t happened to you yet, be warned, they are inevitable. Your

response is inevitable too. It will likely be similar to other parents who have gone before you. Of course, the amplitude of your child's behavior and your own mood will determine the quality of your response too. But, on a good day (or if you're in pubic), you will laugh. On a bad day, you will scream, curse or cry to the heavens above. Either way, your encounter with one of life's inevitables will pass and you will carry on.

If, on that day, you happen to find yourself in a particularly philosophical mood, you just might be able to rationalize that you are getting in some good training for the inevitables of the teenage years...

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Welcome to The Sunday Parenting Party, hosted by Dirt and Boogers, Play Activities, Crayon Freckles, Taming the Goblin, The Golden Gleam, Prickly Mom, and The Tao of Poop. The SPP is place for readers to find ideas on nurturing, educating, and caring for children, as well as honest posts about the stresses of being a parent or caregiver. Links to reviews and giveaways are welcome as long as they are relevant to the topic. All parenting philosophies are welcome with one exception: please do not link to posts promoting physical discipline, as this is something we would feel uncomfortable having on our blogs. (P.S. By linking up you agree that your post and photos are Pinterest, Sulia, G+ and FB friendly. We will be showcasing ideas on The Sunday Parenting Party Pinterest board.)

 

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Letting Go

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“I’m a big, big girl, not a baby, Mama,” Claire announces proudly.

“Yes, you are a big, big girl,” I say with a mix of emotions. The "double” big swells my heart. Yet, there’s also a wistful lump in my throat.

She is big, big. And she’s going to get bigger, bigger!

Today, I am happy and sad. I’m cheering her on her steady march towards childhood, while mourning the disappearance of my baby.

The complexity of my emotions takes me by surprise. Up until now, I have unequivocally celebrated each new milestone, and been completely mesmerized watching Claire’s growth. The particular milestone that has elicited such emotion surprises me too.

I thought I would be shouting from the rooftops, “hooray!”, when we got here. I anticipated yelling, “no more diapers”. I imagined some sort of ritualistic ceremony like setting the diaper genie on fire before throwing it off of a pier and into a river.

Potty training is tripping me up. How about that? Weird, huh?

It’s just that, with every milestone we’ve celebrated so far, some of the baby has still been there. We’ve started solids, learned to sleep through the night, to walk, to throw a ball and climb a wall at the playground, to say "I love you" -- just to name a few of my favorites. The baby has sat alongside each new big, big girl triumph. But potty training seems to have hit me symbolically as the door to babyhood slamming shut.

Today, we celebrate two rites of passage. I am now a mom who has experienced letting go. And Claire is a little girl.

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Welcome to The Sunday Parenting Party, hosted by Dirt and Boogers, Play Activities, Crayon Freckles, Taming the Goblin, The Golden Gleam, Prickly Mom, and The Tao of Poop. The SPP is place for readers to find ideas on nurturing, educating, and caring for children, as well as honest posts about the stresses of being a parent or caregiver. Links to reviews and giveaways are welcome as long as they are relevant to the topic. All parenting philosophies are welcome with one exception: please do not link to posts promoting physical discipline, as this is something we would feel uncomfortable having on our blogs. (P.S. By linking up you agree that your post and photos are Pinterest, Sulia, G+ and FB friendly. We will be showcasing ideas on The Sunday Parenting Party Pinterest board.)

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The Good, The Bad and The Toddler

My baby girl turns TWO! Really, not my baby anymore. She's a person!

I couldn't be more honored to be the mama she chose to witness her transformation from baby to
toddler.

However, the miraculous milestones of toddlerhood give this mama equal opportunity to celebrate, and to complain. Half the time I'm down with the peace sign for two, the other half flipping the bird!

Here's what I mean about toddler schizophrenia:

My toddler has her own personality!
She insists on wearing a hat in eight degree weather, decides she only wants cake for breakfast or refuses to get into a car seat without a huge commotion.

She puts on her clothes all by herself!
After an hour's worth of effort.

She can undress herself too!
In public.

She understands cause and effect!
She opens the refrigerator to dump out the contents of an entire can of coffee or bag of walnuts.

She has a mouth full of baby teeth!
Which she uses to bite the cat, her parents and friends in baby classes.

She climbs up onto her chair to eat all by herself!
She climbs onto tables, bookcases and over various barriers meant to contain her.

She can talk!
Whine, say "no" and imitate my curse words with great precision and impeccable inflection.

She can walk!
Into a crowd or oncoming traffic.

She's gotten so big!
She can reach up onto kitchen counters and other surfaces that contain dangerous objects like knives and pens.

She's even tall enough to reach up and hold my hand when we're walking together!
She refuses to hold my hand when we're walking together.

She can run too!
Away from me after placing beads, pebbles and other random debris in her mouth that she's found on the ground and that are dirty and/or may result in choking.

She eats with a fork!
The fork makes a perfect catapult to propel food away from the table.

She's old enough for potty training!
Oh, yeah, we need to start potty training.

She throws a ball!
Or rocks, blocks and other heavy yet aerodynamic objects capable of breaking windows and/or causing bodily harm.

She likes to draw!
On walls, furniture, expensive family heirlooms and the entire length of her body.

Happy Birthday, sweet girl! I marvel at my growing, learning, curious beauty, who embraces the world with arms wide open!
When she's not making me want to pull my hair out.


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The Wonder Weeks

Have you often wondered what's going on inside that tiny head of your baby? I know I have (especially when NOTHING seems to please her!) That's why I've visited the Wonder Weeks website often since Claire was born. I'm fascinated by the authors' contention that babies reach mental milestones at predictable ages that change the way they perceive the world. Who wouldn't want such a wonderful window into the world of babies? After all, babies do a lot of communicating, but what they are actually saying  often remains a big mystery.

The book's authors outline 10 stages of a baby's development called mental leaps. Each stage is often proceeded by a period of fussiness, as a baby learns to process her world in a new way.  At eight weeks, they contend that a baby starts to understand simple patterns such as "the way light displays shadows on the wall", or at 46 weeks, a baby begins to understand that there's an order in which things are done to reach a goal.

The Wonder Weeks book

My daughter, Claire, is just past the 75 week milestone, a time when the authors suggest that toddlers begin to recognize they're part of a family, distinct from others.

This mental leap is clearly evident at our house. Claire is obsessed with family right now. She will point at us, back and forth, "mama, papa, mama, papa", over and over. Her friend Archie and his mother Elaine are referred to as the one-word contraction, "ArchiElaine". Of course, as with anything toddler, she tends to overgeneralize. She points to all kinds of images throughout the day, and calls them mama.

She calls me some things that are sweet.  Some of the things named "mama" truly make me wonder. I don't wonder what week it is, but, rather, what planet my daughter is from. Here's a sampling of the random things she has called "mama" from the last few days:

Adorable Mama:

Classical Mama:

Holy Mother of God Mama (my personal favorite):

Sex Change Mama (huh?):

"Really? Should I be insulted? What's she thinking?" Mama

(On second thought, I am rather frazzled. Maybe, my daughter -- and the Wonder Weeks-- is on to something.)

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