Day 428: Milestones 101

So, over the past year you've heard me drone on endlessly about this milestone business. Here, as I understand it, is how it all works:

It may seem that babies lie around doing little more than crying, pooping, eating, sleeping for months. But in fact they are secretly working on a huge to-do list of accomplishments - also known as milestones. (I'm sure some child psychologist first applied the term to babies a hundred years ago and had no idea the torture he was inflicting upon poor unsuspecting mothers for the rest of time.) It seems these little beings are supposed to be mastering new skills daily; really, under that kind of pressure, it's no wonder they seem so cranky and miserable sometimes. These milestones run the gamut. From batting at hanging toys to smiling to picking up Cheerios to climbing a flight of stairs, it seems that everything is a milestone of some sort.

Now here's where it starts to get tricky. Not only must they achieve these various goals, but they should really do it within a specific time frame. Drinking from a sippy cup is a bit more impressive at 6 months than it would be at, say, 6 years. Or 60 years. So let's say you open up your trusty (and loathed) baby milestones books and read, "Your 6-month old's stronger neck and arm muscles allow him to practice rolling over toward one side, a milestone that will probably awe and amuse you." You look over at little Timmy lying slobbering on the living room floor, looking as likely to roll over as he is to stand up and hail a cab. Let's just say you are neither awed nor amused. You start to worry that little Timmy is delayed. Babies who are behind in their milestones are delayed. Those who are ahead are advanced. Those who are right on time are, well, they're right on time. So you spend the next three weeks flat on your stomach coaxing Timmy to roll his chubby little self over with various incentives before finally admitting you are a big fat failure of a mother and accepting the fact that poor Timmy will be lying around on your living room floor for the rest of his life. Until one day he suddenly up and rolls over like he's been doing it all his life, and you forget that you just wasted all that time worrying about something that turns out to be absolutely nothing.

And that is how milestones work.

Now poor Maddie, she is advanced in the milestones that nobody seems to care much about. She can stack rings like nobody's business. Her pincer grasp is beyond compare. She flips through pages in a magazine like she was born doing it. In my opinion, of course, these are much more difficult tasks and require far greater intellectual prowess than the "big money" milestones of walking and talking. But still, they really aren't the kind of thing you write home about. And even though everybody says - and I know it's true - that it's not like she's going to crawl to highschool, there is that little part of me that wonders if maybe she actually will.

And so, after this very long introduction, it is with near uncontrollable excitement that I will finally tell you: Mads took her first steps this week!! In total over the past few days I would guess - okay, fine, I know with absolute certainty - that she's taken 10 steps. Not all at once, of course. It might be just the slightest exaggeration to say that she is "walking," but she is finally showing signs that she may one day walk, and for now that is definitely good enough for me.

It seems we are on our way to Toddlerhood; and I would say she's right on time.