The Kid Has Arrived

Who said you could grow up so fast?

I was making conversation with another mom on Saturday at the park as her son and Milo were circling each other warily. She asked me how old he was. Eighteen months, I replied, not thinking much about it at the time. But now I am thinking about it—18 months! Holy cow! My kid is 18 months. A year and a half. You get so used to taking everything one day at a time when you have a baby that sometimes these milestones creep up on you.

For a while when he was younger, I had a lot of self-doubt concerning my parenting skills. I would read accounts of 12 month olds who were talking and running and climbing and sorting and doing all sorts of things, while Milo mostly just wanted to crawl around and stuff objects under the couch. I definitely stressed myself out a little over this - is it my fault, am I not doing enough with him, the right kind of activities, etc - until I finally came to my senses and came to terms with the fact that babies move at their own pace. I stopped worrying so much after that, and concentrated on enjoying the waning days of his babyhood as much as I could.

We’ve witnessed an explosion of learning and capabilities over the last several weeks. He’s starting to speak more instead of just signing, which is pretty fun. His spoken vocabulary now consists of: mama, dada, please (“pease”), thanks (“taaaa”), flower (“flouww”), about a dozen animal sounds when prompted, poop (yay), book (“buk”), mimi (my mom, “meeeem”), nana (Matt’s mom, “naaaaanahhh”), shoe (“dooo”), and, my favorite, all done (“awww don” said brightly and with many exclamation points).

We’re starting to move away from board books to more involved picture books, which he loves and sits through patiently. We read approximately 1,000 books a day, at least that’s the way it seems when I’ve read Interrupting Chicken five times in a row. He’s always been good about playing by himself, and this continues to be true although now he’s added singing into the mix. It always cracks me up when I hear him in his room, singing to himself and playing some weird game that only he understands. When he gets bored with that, he usually wanders into the living room with a blanket over his head, laughing to himself, pretending to walk into things. 

He climbs stairs like a big kid now, no more crawling up or down them, and goes down the slide by himself, sitting up instead of sliding down on his tummy. He prefers to walk instead of being in the stroller and shows a great endurance for long walks, and in true city kid fashion, loves loves loves riding on the subway. When we pass a subway entrance, he walks over to the steps and looks up at me hopefully. “Deee deee?” he asks, casting longing glances down the stairs.

He gives out kisses and hugs now enthusiastically. He still mostly engages in parallel play with other children, except when he’s with his friend Thomas. They actually play together, which is pretty much the cutest thing in the world.

I’m trying to take advantage of every cuddle, every kiss and every game of chase I can in these last months of single child parenting. I know that we’ll love the new baby and that it’s going to bring a whole new wonderful dimension to our family life, but I’ll miss these one-on-one Mama/Milo days.