Chugging Along

Two days ago was Sadie's half birthday; she's past the eighteen month point. Our way of celebrating was to forget all about it until about 10pm Thursday night, at which point I turned to Scott and said, "Oh hey, it's Sadie's half birthday today!" and he said, "Huh," and then we went back to watching "Parks and Recreation."

As Sadie has grown up, I've fallen into the bad habit of pledging that she will do things by a certain point in time. And by "things," I mean walk. Last year I was sure that Sadie was going to walk by Christmas, no matter what. When she got onto the list for a toddler group that began in February, I thought, "She'll definitely be walking by then." Then when all the websites and development books and our pediatrician said that even the late walkers get going by 18 months, I thought to myself, "Well, as long as she's taking steps by then, it'll be okay."

I finally figured out that what I was doing, what I thought of as positive goals to shoot for, aren't positive for anyone. Not for me and Scott, who are nervous enough as it is and don't need any additional standards by which to measure our child as "kinda weird." Definitely not for Sadie, who knows exactly what walking is, exactly when she does and does not want to do it, and will absolutely not be pushed into it one minute before she's good and ready.

So when the 18 month marker came and went, this time it was with a little reminder that in the last few weeks she has made terrific progress, and that the progress is what matters. With increased PT sessions, she gets more confident each time she goes. Confidence at Joy's means confidence at home -- usually, although she still would rather crawl than walk with aid to any given destination.

Today we did a joint PT session with another little girl Sadie's age. Addy can actually get around just fine, and isn't going regularly to PT anymore, but she has speech, feeding and sleeping problems due to bad acid reflux issues as a baby. Joy thought it would be a good idea for the two girls to have a playdate in hopes they'd "rub off" on each other -- that Sadie would be impressed by Addy's fearlessness in the clinic, and Addy would adopt Sadie's tendency to NEVER SHUT UP EVER EVER EVER.

I have no idea if it accomplished either of these things, but it was insanely cute to watch these two little girls sharing a space. Addy was like a tiny little tornado, while Sadie, towering over her, just seemed in awe of her ability to move from the mat to the stairs to the dolls to the kitchen sink in the span of .38 seconds. Sadie must have been feeling a little inadequate, because she used the session as an opportunity to bust out four new words: "sun," "castle," "purple" and "sesquicentennial." Okay, not that last one.