Well, maybe not 532, but somewhere up there. As mommies, there are milestones, moments by which we mark the passage of time, the aging of our angels. Getting pregnant is the first big one, of course, easier for some than others. Then there is passing the glucose test and from there, I'd say delivery was a pretty big milestone. If you decide to breastfeed, being able to do so without it hurting, or getting your little one to latch on is a mark. Changing your first diaper fits in there somewhere too.
There are cute milestones for the babies and cute milestones for mommies, pictures to take, laughs and hugs, and little wobbles... and then there are those less than picture-perfect milestones, the slightly dubious ones that make you chuckle inside, shake your head and wonder what you signed on for (but you press on.)
My best friend emailed me once with one of her "milestones," when her son was about 18 months old. He had been all stopped up for a day or two and couldn't poop. (See, as mom's we suddenly gain this ability to talk about poop as easily as talking about what is for dinner.) Anyway, he was straining, hard. He was sitting in his little chair, crying and completely uncomfortable. So she picked him up, laid him on his changing table and helped nature out. She got the wonderful job of reaching up (with the smallest tip of her little finger, of course), and helping him push out the "blockage." viola! Mommy milestone. Not necessarily one that we'd broadcast from the hilltops, not necessarily something we would take an ad out in the papers for, and probably not something we'd tell all of the relatives at the next family picnic, but a milestone.
Having heard that story and a few similarly "fun" stories from friends about their milestones, I couldn't wait to see what curveballs my little one would throw at me. We had the usual, explosive diarhea, spit up, throwing food, etc., and Friday morning was another one. A little before 5 a.m., I heard a tiny voice - "Mommy! Mommy, I need you!" Rolling over to look at the clock and wondering what the heck could be going on at 5 a.m., I practically fell out of bed and wandered down the hall, trying to rub enough sleep out of my eyes to at least see the floor. When I got to B's room, she was sitting up in her bed and said, "Mommy, there's something in my bed." I thought it was a pull-up full of water having exploded again (that has happened before, looks like of like packing foam- very wierd), and I thought she had an accident. So we went into the bathroom to get cleaned up. As she sat on the potty and I soothed her rumpled feathers, I realized that there was something on her shirt, that ended up on my finger. Taking a closer look at it, I realized that it was macaroni. She had macaroni and cheese for dinner, and a light bulb came on (in my head, not in the bathroom because it would have hurt my eyes.) I took a closer look at her shirt and realized that the poor thing had gotten sick and tossed her cookies all over her bed.
Figuring this out, we finished up on the potty, went back into her room and changed her jammies and her sheets. She felt a little warm and I put her back into bed. Later that morning, when getting ready to go to school, she didn't want to eat breakfast (which is completely unusual for this kid, believe me), and I ended up having to pick her up early from school because she was sick. From there, the early-morning-throw up-in-bed milestone would turn into a sleeping-on-the-couch-all-day sick day, and from there to a daddy milestone of projectile carrots, but that's another story.
In 10 years or so, I will be preparing for her Bat Mitzvah. I doubt that I will tell the story of when she was 3 and woke up in the middle of the night sick, and how we got her all cleaned up and back to bed. But I will remember the milestone, and someday I'm sure I'll tell her the story (and maybe even embarrass her just a bit in front of her friends -or dare I say it, a boyfriend?)
For now, I get to hang out and wait for the next bloody knee from the bicycle, or other dubious milestone. I'm just hoping to avoid any trips to the emergency room. That one, I'm pretty sure I would not look back on fondly.
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