Friday, May 25, 2012

From Baby John to Mr. Independent


I'm not sure where my baby went, but I have it on good authority from several of my friends that the small toddler-type person roaming my house this day is NOT a baby, and therefore can't possibly be mine.

It just seems like a few days - not an actual 14 months - that we brought this little guy home who needed us for everything.

Suddenly, we have a tiny person who regularly exclaims, "I dood it!" - which means, "Leave me alone, Mom, I want to do this myself," or "I did it!" - which means, "Too late, I already did it. You may have even told me not to, but yeah, I'm a big boy, so I did it. Deal with it."



And the walking. He still thinks  sometimes that the best way to cover a lot of ground quickly is the crawl. It makes total sense, too. He's good at it, he has vast experience at it, and he knows the method, so it is the most efficient route. Although he's been pulling up, cruising and taking tentative steps for awhile, he just really didn't see the need in doing that whole walking thing on a regular basis. But more and more, he's getting extremely confident in his walking - to the point that crawling is something you only do when someone asks you if you can walk (naturally).



And it seems like all these accoutrements of independence - the climbing, the walking, the insistence on feeding yourself spaghetti with your hands, the taking off of the pants and emphatically yelling, "No!" - overnight have completely obliterated the remaining vestiges of babyhood. And when he tells me no, he doesn't want to rock before nap, just "Na NOW," I sometimes find myself tearing up.

They told me he'd only be a baby for a tiny while, but it didn't seem like that was possible. What about you Moms? Did you find yourselves surprised at how fast your babies became kids?


Bethany Erickson is the wife of Texas Health Resources web editor Tom Erickson and Mom to a growing boy.

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