Haven’t really written here in a while, as I’ve been in my own head, which tends to flow out on my other blog, but I figure enough time has passed where I have something coherent to say on here.
My little girl has just recently hit 14 months. The realization of that hit me like a ton of bricks, because it honestly still feels like we just brought her home from the hospital not too long ago. However, she is developing so quickly, and sometimes, it feels like it’s getting harder and harder to keep up. Currently, she is standing on her own, cruising (walking while holding onto stationary objects to assist herself) quite efficiently, babbling while learning new words, and generally figuring out how things work, at a rather frightening pace.
As I watch her day to day, and see how she has developed her motor skills, her recognition of words and gestures, her sense of humor, and her ability to learn the mechanics of day to day living, I’m still at a loss for words that I’m somehow involved in all of this. Every little advancement is a cause for celebration nowadays, although admittedly, the celebration consists primarily of clapping, oohing and aahing, and squeals of joy from both my daughter and myself. It’s amazing how much pride you can feel when your little baby does something that we take for granted all of the time, like take a step, bring food to their own mouth, laugh, or a recent development that has my wife and I bursting with joy, giving kisses to loved ones. That’s probably the biggest one. My little girl now knows how to kiss and hug.
When she first did it, on our trip back home to NYC, we were amazed at how suddenly it came about. It was completely unexpected, but you could not have seen two happier parents at that moment when she first returned one of our kisses. Shortly after, it seemed like a lot of her neural pathways began falling into line, because she began picking up other things in short order. Her overall coordination improved a great deal, her ability to repeat things seemed to increase, and she was beginning to learn how to play games. Specifically, my mother taught her this little hand gesture game in Cantonese, and she picked it up and responded to it in a very short time. In fact, she still does it now, despite not having been around my mother for a few weeks, and she’s actually repeating some of the words too, despite not being exposed to Cantonese much except for what she heard from my mother, and what little I’m able to repeat.
I know I’m just doing the standard new parent gushing, but it really is incredible to me watching her grow as much as she has. Without really noticing it, my little baby has grown in my little girl, and before I know it, she’ll be my big girl. While I look forward to it, I’m a bit frightened too, just because I don’t want the time to go by that fast. There are currently some growing pains, mainly the development of her self-identity, which carries with it some willfullness, as well as some odd moments of crankiness and temper flare-ups. Overall though, she is the sweetest little thing, and I count myself lucky for having her as my first child.
That being said, I’ll try to be more active here, as there are plenty of things going on in her life that I think would be interesting to recount. The hard part is remembering it myself in order to write it down. My brain is so moment to moment lately, I don’t have the brain capacity to retain the interesting parts for very long.
