Milestones

I was thinking about milestones last night. Some are super and some really aren't that great. Most of the baby ones are pretty awesome. Sitting up, first tooth, walking, talking, potty training, etc. There is very little negative about those. For The Boy, talking was the biggest one. He was 20 months old before uttering a sound. His doctor told us that if he didn't have at least one word by his next appointment, then we would need to set up speech therapy sessions. Then he said "bye". The next day it was "go bye" (he has always been my traveller) and a few days after that, it was 3 word sentences, all caught up with not even a hint of a delay by 2. Now the trick is getting him to be quite. So far I haven't figured it out but if I do, I'll be sure to let you know :)

With Ms Thang, her milestones didn't seem as important. Could that be because, as Quigs says, she is the second one and no cares about the second one? Or is it because she did most things early so we didn't have the anticipation that we did with TB? She talked early (and all the freaking time) so there wasn't that huge emphasis that was placed on The Boy. She also walked on time, cut her first tooth on time, etc. She did everything just when she should have (those have the only things that she has done like she is supposed to). Her biggest one was potty training. It happened earlier for her than for The Boy but it was much harder. We tried everything with him and it wasn't until I threw up my hands in frustation and gave up completely, buying the biggest package of diapers I could find, that he decided that he was ready. Ms Thang talked about it for months (since before she turned 2 because she was asking about while since in DC)but it took her until over the winter to get it done. I even tried giving up and not caring but she didn't care, it wasn't happening until she was darn good and ready, no matter what I did.

Some of the milestones have been bittersweet, like the first day of school. It was very sad that I had a kid old enough to be in school. I got over it but I was still upset back then. The one that I DON'T like is learning to read. Not only does it take forever, but it puts me at a disadvantage. I can't spell things anymore and have him not know what I'm saying. Now we are working on not blurting out what he thinks I spelled because I don't want MT to know what I'm talking out. The other issue is that every milestone since learning to talk has brought about severe cases of stuttering for TB. Every single one. Potty training, sleeping by himself, starting school, learning to read, etc. This learning to read, by virtue of taking longer has also caused the longest bout of stuttering yet. I try to be understanding but sometimes, he drives me nuts. I know he can't help it but when it takes him 5 minutes to get out a sentence, I've lost focus because 12 dozen other things have happened since he started talking to me. Once he gets a handle on reading, he'll be fine but right now, it is so hard.

BTW, because it is not an all the time thing, his doctor is totally unconcerned about it.