Just a father

by Robert
(Angus)

Our daughter blew most of the milestones out of the water as she made her way along.

At 14 months was responding to two part instructions and at 21 months was making full simple sentences and showing contnrol over prepostions.

I charted each new element in her utterances and was astonished at the breadth of the grammar that she controlled. But she seemed to begin producing actual speech a few months after what is taken as average.

At nineteen months, upon returning from an extended visit abroad, she had spied out the location where Mom's brownies sat on the counter; she pulled open the dishwasher to take out a small plate, reached up to fish a fork out of the silver drawer, went to get me from the living room, and indicated the location of the brownies while saying, "Daddy, chocolate."

At a week before eleven months she took her first seven unaided steps, and two weeks before her first birthday went up eleven steps in two flights on the jungle gym at the local park, and at twenty months was going unaided up a ladder more than six feet high to get to the high slide at the park while she continually ordered me to go away when I came near enough to offer support or protection.

But at the same time she insisted on continuing to drink her milk from the bottle that she had used since her first birthday until some time after her third birthday, and even after that has gone back to it on occasion.

And through it all she has been a two and a three year old, with all the good, the bad, and the ugly that that entails. She has done it her way, and defied norms and norming.

Probably very much like every other kid.