Unexpected milestones

This post is inspired by Shot@Life, an initiative of the United Nations Foundation. Please leave a comment below. Every comment provides a vaccine for a child.

My son was five months old when he said his first word. This is the stuff of family legends that gets bent and bowed and tucked away and brought out again in a far-different shape that it was first created. One day that five-month milestone will be whittled down to three months or earlier, maybe shrink back to the womb. But five months is the true timeline.

I know because I was there to hear the "HI!" emerge from the babbling.

By the time he was a year old, I had a well-filled notebook lined with careful columns of the 120 words he could say. I tracked it all, just pages away from spiral-bound lists of when I breastfed him, how long his naps were, what he weighed at each well-check doctor appointment. I read like crazy and stacks of child-development books, affirmations for new parents, guides to schedules and sleeping and crying it out and attachment parenting piled up on the table next to the glider where I nursed my babbling baby boy from infancy into toddlerhood.<

I charted this new territory of motherhood quietly and calmly. E rattled off the barnyard animals but he wasn't walking, or even attempting to cruise around from coffee table to sofa to ottoman to wobbly fall on the floor. 

It will come, I assured myself and my then-mother-in-law, who fretted that her babies walked early and mine did not.

 

All of his energy is going to conversation, I said, repeating the mama-wisdom I'd heard my mother say and her mother say. I believed it. Still, I'd carry that notebook with me to see the pediatrician, who I knew was relaxed about children's individual growth and development, just in case she asked where his energy was going if it wasn't pushing him up on his feet and propelling him around our tiny apartment. 

She never asked, at least in a worried way. And he did walk, at 15 months. Then he ran and climbed and gazed lovingly at Gloria Estefan and shook his tiny, diapered booty. He was potty-trained and sent off to preschool. He eventually skipped with proficiency and can wheel a scooter with the best of 'em at the park. And he did all of that, talking the entire time, providing his own color commentary to each milestone he passed. 

 

As I ticked off the milestones in my head, notebook and then reassuring discussions with E's grandmothers, I felt the slide into a different parenting space. One where the worries shifted from "will he ever really learn to tie a shoe without my assistance?" and "please, God, let him master the art of peeing standing up" to bigger childhood concerns we all cringe to see coming. Bullying. Broken hearts. Driving. Drugs. Prom date disappointment. Moving away. That first god-awful apartment with seven other laundry protesters. The first job interview. Love. They'd come. But not yet. They were off somewhere in tweendom or teendom or beyond.

Once he was safely in big-boy undies, I thought the milestones had subsided and The Big Stuff was enough off in the distance that I could breathe easy. What I didn't know was that the milestones would keep coming, and bring a gasp of surprise and wonder and bittersweet delight.

I got that the moment I heard E read aloud for the first time. Sure, I knew it was going to happen soon. For a year or two, he'd been sounding out words and memorizing books we'd lovingly brutalized reading over and over again. He built a solid list of sight-words, much like that first list of vocabulary, and soon, he was stringing together sentences. I urged him on, we practiced, he learned to write as he read and the two skills skipped along happily with my talker of a boy.

 

Then the words came tumbling out of his mouth for pages at a time. And the tears fell down my smiling cheeks while more words came. I'd try to capture it all on video, and only end up with bits and pieces. Or I'd mean to press record but would find my fingers unable to move away from holding the book and my boy as he read to me. As he read to me.

 

Here he is at seven, reading pages from a favorite, funny book. A first-grader, his amazing teacher pushed him to think and research and ask questions and told him it was time to read more. She gave him his first chapter book to read on his own. It was from the Cam Jansen series. He didn't love it. He liked it (he's diplomatic that way) just enough to open his hands when I handed him another chapter book and another and another to read on his own.

That milestone of reading at six became the even more astounding milestone of whizzing through chapter books at seven. Today, nearing the end of age eight, this kid hates to go anywhere without a book. He's devoured the three series by Rick Riordan in a matter of months and he cannot wait for the next 500+-page book to come out this fall. He prefers to lay side by side before bedtime, reading independently for a bit rather than letting me read aloud to him. 

 

I miss that sometimes. I think I cherished Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White even more than the words he wrote deserved (and they deserved a lot of love) because it was the last chapter book I read aloud to my son this year. I won't hold that sadness, though, because it is so fun to see E buried inside a story, bursting to talk about the characters and begging to stop off at a bookstore. 

At seven, with a biography of Jackie Robinson in his backpack and Diary of a Wimpy Kid on his nightstand and 39 Clues at his dad's house, all simultaneously half-read, he still hadn't figured out how to breathe underwater during swimming lessons and was in a full-on boycott of even TRYING to ride his bike. (The swimming came the next spring but he's still a bicycle rebel. And so I buy another book, and exhale.)

 

This kid is who he is, and I get the joy of discovering him every day. That's not overly sentimental. Sometimes it is exhausting and hard and full of fret. But most moments, it is me with my notebook or laptop  or video recorder or chapter book, meticulously marking the path he sets out on. One word, one step, one sentence, one chapter, one series, one mother's spiral notebook, one milestone at a time. 

The rest will come. Today, all of his energy is going to reading. 

This post is inspired by Shot@Life, an initiative of the United Nations Foundation that educates, connects and empowers the championing of vaccines as one of the most cost effective ways to save the lives of children in the world’s hardest to reach places.

During Shot@Life’s Blogust, 31 bloggers, one each day in August, are writing about moments that matter. For every comment on this post and the 30 other posts, Walgreens will donate a vaccine (up to 50,000 vaccines). A child dies every 20 seconds from a vaccine-preventable disease. We can change this reality and help save kids’ lives! 

Sign up here for a daily email so you can quickly and easily comment and share every day during Blogust! Stay connected with Shot@Life at www.shotatlife.org, join the campaign on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.

Please leave a comment below. Every comment provides a vaccine for a child. 

Comments

[Kate]

Great post. I think the great mantras of parenting are This Too Shall Pass and It Will Happen When They Are Ready.

[Lucy Ann]

Being a child who begged my parents to teach me to read so I wouldn't have to wait until they were ready to read me the Sunday funnies, I loved your sharing about a little boy who shares my passion of reading.

[lynda @MommyPowers]

Thanks for sharing your story! Every child matters!

[Dolly Navina Lakra]

Beautiful !

[Stacy]

Thank you and thank Shot@Life for this blog.

[steph]

Such a lovely post. Thanks for supporting Shot@Life

[sean ishum]

thanks for participating in this campaign!

[sean ishum]

thanks for participating in this campaign!

[Al Denelsbeck]

There's always something heartwarming about a kid who reads a lot.

Thanks for supporting Shot@Life!

[Colleen]

He couldn't have picked a better hobby, in my opinion :] Thanks for supporting Shot@Life!

[Migdalia - @MsLatina]

Thank you for sharing your wonderful son with us and for providing vaccines for children in need!

[Alina]

Here's to reading!

[Petrine Ashley]

Watching E grow and change and learn is such an amazing adventure for our whole family and it just keeps on giving. He is such a great kid and we love him so much. And we all worry so much about our babies even long after they are grown. What fun he is and was!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now on to our Grace!

[emily grace]

Great posting dear. Its a great one and also a beatifully crafted one. looking forward for more from this website

[Sandhay]

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[Sandhay]

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