My Non Typical Favorite Milestones

Everyone talks about when baby first walks, talks, sits up, or crawls.  Those are exciting and sweet, but there are milestones that really get parents, or at least me, super jazzed.  You won’t even know how awesome they are, until they happen.  While reaching a milestone means one more step away from the beginning years and firsts, these milestones make so many complicated things about parenthood easier.

 

Kissing

It starts with big open mouth kisses then evolves into little pecks.  This is a milestone that melts my heart.  One of the sweetest parts of my week is when I get twenty kisses in a row from a toddler who’s feeling very lovey dovey when they are usually more prickly then affectionate.

Drawing recognizable pictures

That moment you get more than just a furious scribble of back and forth lines or circles and can recognize what the story is in a picture – Cool!!  I loved all the scribbles and dots and very brown paintings.  When I started getting rainbows, people, and tree pictures though, it brought refrigerator art to a whole other level.  We love art in our family, so watching the progression over the years is fun.

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Being able to dress themselves

This is one of those milestones where they are able to do something, but it’s unknown to you because you’re so used to just doing this for your kids, you forget that you should mayyybeee let them try to do it themselves.  Then they try, and it’s annoying, slow, and frustrating.  Before you know it they’ve gotten the hang of it.  Even though the actual getting dressed can be slower for a long time, it’s worth the struggle.  With two toddlers it’s nice to be freed up to and cut down in the amount of steps parents have to do to get out the door.

Using a bowl with the stomach flu

This was by far my most celebrated milestone.  When my husband and I did a Parents Night Out event through my mom’s group, three other couples raved about how exciting this was.  Nothing makes you so happy while feeling so lame at the same time.  In our defense, it was the beginning of Stomach Bug season so on a lot of our minds, haha/boo! This cuts down on a lot of cleaning or bedding/carseats/rugs/etc which can make the whole being sick even more stressful. Once you reach this milestone, you will be thinking, “I have arrived!”

Holding your hand/No longer running away in parking lots

I feel like I got my sanity back when Reece stopped fleeing out into the parking lot without a care in the world.  This might not be as big a deal if you have an only child, but if you have two close in age, you dread having to get out of the car in a parking lot or street.

These are just a few of my favorite milestones that aren’t highlighted of baby books.  What are your favorite milestones?