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Watching Aidan’s development is absolutely fascinating to me.  I had always heard that development happens in spurts but had never really witnessed it firsthand before.  Aidan is currently experiencing several developmental leaps right now. 

He is starting to pick up phonics.  He is only 2 1/2.  My husband and his mother could both read a bit at age 3, so perhaps this shouldn’t be that surprising to me.  We have a couple of wonderful Leapfrog phonics toys.  A Leapfrog Phonics Bus and a Word Whammer.  I LOVE these toys!  He has started to associate sounds with about half of his letters.  It is so cute to hear him say “D says duh” and the like.  Over the last couple of days he has learned to spell “MOM” and “DAD” on the Word Whammer. 

Yesterday at Little Gym and today at Pump It Up, he was noticeably more engaged with the other kids.  It is still normal for kids this age to do mostly parallel play, but I have really noticed him actually engaging other children more just this week.  It is so much fun to watch this.

And a couple of posts ago, I spoke about him climbing.  Wow!  Today at Pump It Up, I turned around inside one of the inflatables, and he was climbing up the “ladder” to the top of the slide completely without me.  He had no fear.  When I saw him doing it by himself, I had to squelch the part of me that wanted to run up behind him and follow him up like I have always done.  He climbed all the way up and came down by himself.  He was so proud and started clapping.   He went up and down all by himself at least 5 more times and we had a blast!

On the way home, he was asking for french fries.  Normally I will stop and get him some fries at McDonalds after our Wednesday outing to Pump It Up.  (I know…bad mama.  He doesn’t eat fast food much at all and has never had a sip of soda!  There…I feel better now.  :-))  I got him a cheeseburger (I thought I’d give it a try) and took the meal home.  He sat up and had almost all the fries and about 1/3 of the cheeseburger!!!  Meats have been a sticking point for Aidan.  He has tended not to know what to do with them so he chews and chews and then there is like a meat paste left in his mouth.  But he really ate this cheeseburger!  He has been doing this with more and more foods lately.  Perhaps because he has all his 2 year molars?

I sat there watching him and felt a tidal wave wash over me.  I didn’t even recognize what I was feeling at first.

I felt normal.

It was really the first time I can actually really remember feeling normal deep into my core in almost 3 years.  Sure I have had moments of normal here and there…but never really a moment where I didn’t find myself thinking something about his preemiehood.  For a while this morning I forgot he was a preemie.  I just saw my son.

I loved this morning.  I love feeling normal.  But most of all, I love my amazing son.