Nearly a year on...
Archie is nearly a year old.
A year old!
There's a cliche that kids grow up too quick. And now I'm a parent I realise it might be a cliche, but it's true.
And something struck me the other day that you don't realise before you're a parent: kids grow up in front of your eyes. There are no milestones.
It sounds weird, but what I'm getting at is that before you're a parent it seems that children grow up in milestones:
First smile
Grabbing things
Rolling over
Crawling
First tooth
Standing
Speaking
Walking
etc.
In the first few months some of those probably do 'just happen'. But as Archie is becoming a proper little man I notice that things happen much more gradually. He now says 'Daddy', but it was a gradual process.
He has been walking along with the aid of furniture for months, but it just kind of happened gradually, from balancing on the furniture, to reaching for stuff, to pulling himself along. There were no frantic phonecalls to my mum to pronounce the latest milestone. He can stand unaided for a few seconds (when it suits him), but again, no big announcements to the world.
The first tooth to cut was seen as a milestone, but purely to give us some piece and quiet. Otherwise my son is growing up quite gradually in front of our eyes. It seems that everyday he becomes more of a little man with his own personality.
And the worst thing is, as fucking fantastic as it is, it's also heartbreaking. What happened to that tiny ball of reflexes that I cradled for an hour whilst Lucie was in the recovery room at 3am on that Sunday morning? Barely a year later he's nearly walking, he's saying the odd word and is gaining an understanding of the world around him. He can turn lights on and off (seriously) and turn the DVD on and off.
Heaven only knows what he will be like in a years time.
A year old!
There's a cliche that kids grow up too quick. And now I'm a parent I realise it might be a cliche, but it's true.
And something struck me the other day that you don't realise before you're a parent: kids grow up in front of your eyes. There are no milestones.
It sounds weird, but what I'm getting at is that before you're a parent it seems that children grow up in milestones:
First smile
Grabbing things
Rolling over
Crawling
First tooth
Standing
Speaking
Walking
etc.
In the first few months some of those probably do 'just happen'. But as Archie is becoming a proper little man I notice that things happen much more gradually. He now says 'Daddy', but it was a gradual process.
He has been walking along with the aid of furniture for months, but it just kind of happened gradually, from balancing on the furniture, to reaching for stuff, to pulling himself along. There were no frantic phonecalls to my mum to pronounce the latest milestone. He can stand unaided for a few seconds (when it suits him), but again, no big announcements to the world.
The first tooth to cut was seen as a milestone, but purely to give us some piece and quiet. Otherwise my son is growing up quite gradually in front of our eyes. It seems that everyday he becomes more of a little man with his own personality.
And the worst thing is, as fucking fantastic as it is, it's also heartbreaking. What happened to that tiny ball of reflexes that I cradled for an hour whilst Lucie was in the recovery room at 3am on that Sunday morning? Barely a year later he's nearly walking, he's saying the odd word and is gaining an understanding of the world around him. He can turn lights on and off (seriously) and turn the DVD on and off.
Heaven only knows what he will be like in a years time.