Milestones, sort of

These days I’m impressed by mums who can accurately pinpoint when their children hit certain milestones. For me, other than sleeping through the night, which was clearly evidenced by me not having to wake up before 7am, all the other milestones were a blur, a process that happened gradually such that I couldn’t say for sure when she started being “able to” to certain things.

Take holding her bottle for instance. When i first started trying to make her do it, the success attempts looked to me like her hands just happened to fortuitously be in a position to clamp the bottle in place. Over time, as consistency built up and her fingers opened up to truly grab the bottle I became happy to declare that she can hold her own bottle. But ask me when she started being able to and I’ll be stumped. When she was 2 months old and clamping the bottle between fists or when she’s 6 months old and holding the bottle gingerly between her palms or now when she can grab the bottle and send it accurately into her mouth, and tilt it upwards when the liquid is no longer in the teat?

Same with walking. The process went from me holding up both her hands and her flailing her legs in semi running manner (8 months?) to gradually being able to place both feet on the ground and move stably while holding on with both hands to being able to walk holding just one hand to being able to lunge forward towards me taking a step or two unsupported to being able to walk across the living room unsupported to being able to walk unsupported while hugging a rabbit soft toy bigger than her, and still I’m not comfortable with saying she can walk because unsupported she will fall after a maximum of say 10 steps.

So that’s why you seldom see declaration of milestones on this blog but yet what’s the point of having a baby blog if not to remind obeself of the cute milestones? And so with great reluctance i say sophia can (sort of) walk and can competently feed herself with hands using the pincer grip (when she is not distracted by something 100x more exciting than food, like a camera)

That’s her eating very well, picking out pieces with the perfect pincer grip, until I fish out the camera, whereupon she immediately spat out everything in her mouth and I can just hear the brainwaves saying “forget food, gimme camera!”