Milestones

Warning: this may be one of those nauseating parenting blog posts that marvel about the wonder that is my child. Although, there is a reference to someone's stinky butt, so maybe not. Or maybe that's worse. I know it's been a while, but maybe you just want to skip this post and wait for the next one.

That said, there are a few moments that stick out in my mind as gateways to a new and better way of life, moments where parenting got - if not easier - a little less hands-on. Moments where I got to sit down on the job. Like the time when The Boy learned to pump his legs and I no longer had to push him on the swing, or when he figured out that he could drag a chair over to the fridge and get a yogurt out all by himself. We're still trying to get to a place where he can consistently - and cleanly! - wipe his own butt, but he has reached the point where he can reach the water fountain all by himself.

And now we are on the verge of the biggest, most satisfying milestone of all. A couple weeks ago, I sat down with The Boy and Hop On Pop. He had been calling out some simple words he saw - like "to" and "from" and "stop" and "go" - for a while and I wanted to see if he was reading them or just recognizing them. When we opened the book, sure enough, he started sounding out the words. I had to help him out with things like "fight" and "night", and sometimes he would get a little lazy and guess a word based on its first letter, but there was an amazing light bulb moment when he realized that if he could read "play" he could also "day." It was just as amazing for me to watch him work through the book, page by page, as if I could see things click into place as the little gears turned in his head.

We're still a ways away from that delicious moment when I say to the child nipping at my heels, "go read a book," but it's so close I can almost taste it.