Today is Linnea’s four-month birthday and the mini milestone is making me think about something I’ve been musing over since Miles was a tiny baby. With both kids, but especially Linnea, I marvel at the predictability of babies and little kids.
In some ways, I can’t believe I’m writing that. Babies? Toddlers? PREDICTABLE? As if. I can hear Miles laughing in my head. Right now he’s running around his grandma and grandpas condo insisting on putting on and taking off his shoes and jacket, over and over again, even though we aren’t going anywhere, while he throws Goldfish on the ground in disgust even though he loves them yesterday.
But in other ways, babies and toddlers are far more predictable than adults, and I find great comfort in that. Starting from when Miles was in utero, I was always surprised and delighted when he hit the little milestones the doctors and books told me he would hit. I felt him kick right around 18 weeks. My belly ‘popped’ at 24 weeks. I measured right on track week after week, showing that he was growing right on track. After he was born, most milestones happened as expected, down to the day. We were told his jaundice would go away after 24 hours on light therapy, and it did. The books said he would start sleeping more than two hours at a time after two weeks, and he did. He would be ready for solids at six months, walk right around 13 months, transition from two to one naps at 14 months, start throwing tantrums at about 18 months … check, check, check, DEFINITE check.
I’m thinking about the predictability phenomenon this week as Linnea enters a four-month sleep regression. Like Miles, she has hit most milestones right on time. And this week, I’m learning that the four-month sleep regression is real and it happens at … you guessed it … four months old. She went from sleeping through the night to waking up twice every night about a week ago, and there’s no real explanation other than the aforementioned sleep regression. And the thing is, I find it super comforting that her pattern is normal. I don’t really mind that she’s all of a sudden a fitful sleeper, keeping me up at night, because I know that’s what she’s SUPPOSED to be doing and that it’s normal and healthy.
That’s how I feel about most things baby- and toddler-related. So much of life is wild, unpredictable, unexplainable, not-what-we-planned, exciting, disappointing, messy … and kids are all of those things. But also, somehow, they’re not.
When Miles started throwing food off his high chair and finding great delight in the dog eating his discarded chicken and green beans, I Googled ‘19 months throw food highchair’ and found that the behavior is typical, along with several tips on how to correct it. None of the methods worked and they still aren’t – at almost two years old, Miles still finds it hilarious to feed his dinner to the dog, no matter how many times I say ‘we keep food on the table’ and allow him to pour the dog’s food into the bowl – but I like knowing there are many other toddlers out there doing the same thing he’s doing, and many other parents feeling the same frustration as me.
And when Miles starting acting jealous of Linnea after we brought her home from the hospital, crying when I picked her up and trying to hide her bottle, I was mentally and emotionally prepared because I’d read about other small toddlers doing exactly that when introducing a new baby.
The defined milestones make me feel a sense of community with other parents, even if it is a largely invisible community. I know it’s there. We all know it’s there. Any and every milestone our kids are going through, other babies and toddlers and children and teenagers have been through it before — heck, probably even us as parents have been through it, many years ago. I love that thought because it provides a sense of order and stability in a chaotic world.