Everything She CAN Do

A couple of months ago, Beany had her 15 month check-up.

She’s missing some of her milestones.

I’ve never really been interested in the milestones but I hadn’t realised how restrictive they until Beany was missing some of them. And how pointless some of them are when you’re talking about a kid who’s spent their entire life in various forms of lockdown.

The main points were: she’s behind with her speech, behind with building blocks, behind with eating solid foods.

And it was upsetting to hear at first but the more I think about it, the more I think Beany should be praised for how far she’s come for a lockdown baby.

She didn’t have much support for feeding. She’s not had much support for her reflux. Our support for our issues with breastfeeding? A ten-minute video call with a breastfeeding consultant over whatsapp. A few messages after the fact. Nothing else, and all that really happened was that we had a hungry miserable baby on our hands and switched over to formula to feed her.

She’s still waiting for support for her sleeping issues.

She’s being referred to a speech therapist. She spent the first six months of her life hardly seeing anyone. Most of the people she’s seen for her entire life have been wearing masks. We learn to speak as much by seeing as we do by hearing. We learn by being exposed to language, to people, if she’s not seeing people, hearing people talk other than me, my wife, and Snappy.

Cats do not count.

Things She Can Do

So she doesn’t say words on command or stack blocks, she can do so much more.

She does say words, bow, flower, did it, bubba. She had a small list but she doesn’t say them on command. Hell, she doesn’t do anything on command. She says what she wants and when she wants to. The Health Visitor was surprised when Beany didn’t say mama. What she doesn’t realise is that Beany knows she doesn’t need to say mama. She’s always with mama, always has her attention. She can saw bow though, and Flower (which is what she calls Snappy).

She was walking at ten months old and last month she started walking up and down the stairs. She can climb anything. She’s already a daredevil, climbing the slide and sliding down it backwards on her own. She will climb on the kitchen chairs to reach…well whatever she sees. She will climb on the coffee table.

She’s so loving too. She will hug you and go ‘aw’ and pat you on the back. She loves hugs, loves to be near you, to the point where she is lying on top of you to be near you.

She will hand you things when asked. She plays cars and makes vroom noises. She doesn’t care about blocks, blocks are fun to knock over, but cars and dolls are much more interesting.

She already knows how to use the phone, talks on the phone to me, speed dials people.

She will pet dogs and cats really gently. She loves the cats, will follow them around to stroke them. Will climb into her buggy is one of the cats is sleeping in it to stroke them. Will give the cats toys. How many 15 month year olds will sit and gently and properly stroke a cat?

My little bean is amazing, learns new words every day, new ways to climb on stuff, new things to chew on.

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