Milestones in due course

The girls have been making great leaps forward this summer. Do you recognize something different about Edith below? (Apologies for the lousy photo--she was on the move.)

Edith came home from school one afternoon this spring, threw herself on her bed, and sighed, "Mom, Nola is like, the Queen of Tooth Losing." Though not yet in line for the throne, on July 14 Edith nevertheless joined the ranks of the gap-grinned elite. I made the mistake of commenting after a few days that the loss of a bottom tooth hardly made a difference in her appearance, since her lip usually conceals the hole. At which she pranced and preened in front of the mirror saying, "Yes, it does. It makes a big difference. Can't you see? My smile is so much cuter." May we all be of such a mind in our 80s and 90s.

Since Edith's tooth fell out of its own accord while she was playing, I am hoping this bodes well for her body's ability to shed that which must be shed when the time comes. None of my baby teeth fell out without assistance either from my father or--at age eleven when most of them were still in there and things were getting a bit desperate--from the oral surgeons. Hopefully Edith's road to dental maturity is smoother. And as (1) I am in the humanities and (2) never studied human anatomy, I'm prepared to make a wild analogical leap and anticipate that as go the baby teeth so go the babies. To wit, maybe any children Edith bears one day will similarly decide to enter the world on their own and not wait it out until evicted by modern medicine. Then she'll be two up on me. (The doctors reading may now feel free to rein in this flight of fancy by explaining the different chemical and physical processes whereby teeth fall out and labor begins and the utter lack of connection between the two.)

***

Meanwhile, a lengthy separation seems to have done the trick the second summer 'round, and 2 1/2-year-old Alice appears on her way to weaning, where 1 1/2-year-old Alice was not. She was ready to nurse when I returned from Kentucky, but when I told her there might not be much milk at first and Tom chimed in more emphatically that the mommy milk was all gone, Alice took this suggestion seriously. (At least, after proposing that we get more mommy milk at the store.) She nurses for awhile in the mornings as she wakes up, but in the evenings she curls up in my lap for songs and tells me the mommy milk is all gone, without giving it a try. In between she doesn't even mention it. She doesn't seem upset by the change, and so it appears we've arrived at a moment when she's psychologically ready to wean.

Could this six-year chapter in parenting really be ending? Whoa.Wow. And with sincere thanks for the gift of it all, hallelujah.

It reminds me of Edith's potty training: We'd tried various recommended methods a number of different times, but they never worked. So we'd back off for awhile. Then one day Edith's preschool teacher looked at her, smiled, and said, "I think you could wear Pull-ups to school now. What do you think?" Edith was tickled, wore a Pull-up the next day, and was potty-trained, day and night, from that moment forward. No doubt she could have made the switch a day or a week earlier. Or maybe a month or more. Who knows exactly when she was ready? But once we were in the window where she was psychologically prepared to use the toilet, the simplest of suggestions worked where all the more elaborate methods had failed before. So, too, with weaning.

Once again the take-home lesson for me is: Trust your kid's internal timetable on the developmental milestones. They'll get there.

Unless they're settling in for a 43rd week of gestation or registering for middle school with a mouth full of baby teeth. Sometimes, just maybe, they'll need a firm nudge.