Growing Up

My baby is growing up. This really shouldn't come as a surprise to me, but what is a surprise is how I've been feeling about it lately. I have always been so excited for James to reach different milestones and I've loved seeing how happy he is when he learns new things, that I've never really felt sad that he was growing up, just excited. Until a few days ago :)

Now that he can walk, James has started to really love to go to the park and play on the playground so I have been taking him about every other day. A couple of days ago we went and in my head I imagined how it would go: I would push James on the swings for a little while, then I would walk with him to the play area and help him down the slide and bring him to the different parts he can reach and he would explore them cautiously. Um no. That child climbed all over that thing like a monkey, with no regard for his safety or my cardiac health!!! He even fell into things a few times and before I could scoop him up and console him when the tears came, he just laughed and kept going!! The kicker was when he  climbed his way up 6 or 7 big steps, pushed himself down the big twisty slide, and then turned around and crawled back up said slide and then went down again. Backwards. I was not prepared for such big boy activities!!!

I guess what surprised me the most was how, in just a month or so, he went from being cautious, needing me beside him all the time and prone to tears if things were difficult to this wild little boy. Who didn't apparently need his mommy to hold his hand while he went down the slide...*sniff*. So while I am excited at his development, this new independence of his is taking a little getting used to :)

 

Today was his first bottle-free day, we are now officially sippy cup only in this household! James hasn't learned any new signs recently, but he has learned how to point and say "what's that?", which he does pretty much none stop everywhere we go. He even has strangers answering him!! He also says "yeah" every once in awhile and it is so cute! Dang, we love our little man!!!