I feel like I should be using this blog to detail the innumerable little accomplishments Gianna seems to complete daily but when I begin to write about those milestones it all just seems so dull in comparison to watching them evolve in person. So, I’ve left this post blank for many weeks now all with the hope that I would someday find the words to make these tiny miracles of a growing life seem somehow less ordinary when in fact that is exactly what they are, ordinary. Children the whole world over, poor or rich, watching Baby Einstein or playing with sticks in mud for lack of other toys, if given the proper nourishment of body will all tackle and surmount the daunting tasks of rolling over, sitting up, crawling and then walking. There is not much a parent can do in any part of the world to hold a child back from doing these things eventually. And even though we know these milestones are inevitable, a progression of time we cannot slow down or speed up, when we watch them occurring gently, easily, one fraction of carpeted ground first scratched at then trampled upon first by exploring fists then by exploring feet, it all seems too awesome to put into words. The ordinary becomes the profane, the greatest expression of life’s quenchless thirst to keep moving, to keep growing, keep tackling new heights. It never really ends, the achievement of these milestones. They just stop getting recorded, become so nuanced you cannot tell where the progression of one ends and the next stage begins. So that even in adulthood as we become proficient at new things, parenthood being one of them, we forget to mark it down on our own growth chart, so natural has the growth process become to us.
So, in a little effort to keep up with the growing litany of Gianna’s “firsts” here is a running list of all she now knows how to do and the tasks she is beginning to master:
1. She sits up by herself, unaided.
2. She eats solid food (a feat of tongue olympics requiring a reversal of her birth reflexes which allow for nursing).
3. She has learned how to get out of a sitting position and onto the floor on her stomach.
4. She knows how to get up on all fours, rock back and forth, and make crawling motions with her legs (the arms I’m sure will come any day now and I’ll never have peace again!).
5. She can pivot in a circle using an army crawl/leg kick combination.
6. She uses her voice to whine and whimper when she is not getting what she wants.
7. She can anticipate hidden objects. If I hide behind her back with her facing a mirror, she knows to look behind her to find me.
8. Her manual dexterity is amazing now. She can crudely use a pincer grasp (the thumb and forefinger) to locate the collar on her shirt, grab paper and reach for Miko’s ears.
9. She can twirl her wrist to the tune of Les Petites Marionettes and is practicing the opening and closing of her palm to wave hello and goodbye.
10. And here is the one that makes me most proud, she shows sympathy towards other children in distress. She whimpers and pleadingly looks from the child who has caught her attention with her cries of hunger or discomfort to her mommy and flaps her hands at her side while her eyes well up with tears and her bottom lip pouts outward, all to vanish when I quickly assure her she is not experiencing that other child’s discomfort as her own. I love her humanitarian spirit though it pains me a little to see her get so physically upset by another child’s distress, convinced as she is that she is also feeling those things.
