Independence Is a Messy Transition

Daniel appeared like a little man sitting in his miniature chair at the table and taking fist-fulls of fruit and shoving it into his mouth while surrounded by his new friends at day care.

One of the things Daniel's day care begins teaching all of the children upon arrival is how to become more independent. He has only been attending for about a week and already he wants to be more like the 18 month old children in his class.

"I'm losing my baby," Claudia exclaimed at one moment. 

Yeah, Daniel is starting to do a few more new things and we're realizing progress can be messy. It's cute to watch him be a little man eating at his miniature chair and table in day care. Frankly, we don't have to clean up the mess on the floor afterwards. At home, it's a different story.

Daniel is starting to use a spoon. By that, I mean he holds it in one hand while shoveling food into his mouth with the other. He pauses and looks at you. A grin creeps across his face. He knows how to use the spoon but prefers the feeling of soft banana squishing in his fist while eating.

Before day care, we would spoon feed Daniel the majority of his food. He would eat pieces of fruit by hand, but that was about all. Now he is eating by hand pasta, vegetables, fruit and whatever else we give him. Some days are cleaner than others.

In other developments, Daniel is starting to finally gain enough confidence to walk by himself - even if he is making it into a game.

He crawls out of his bedroom and into the nearby bathroom out of view. Then, he'll burst into the doorway and waddle his way toward you with a huge grin, laughing and arms pointed toward the ceiling. 

He totally knows what he is doing.

We receive daily reports from day care and they say he is starting to cruise around a lot more. That's definitely a welcome change for the staff, if not for Claudia and I who love to tote him around like an accessory. 

One day I observed him in his class room and everyone was standing in a line to go outside. Daniel was the last child in line. It was hard to see him because he was sitting down. The teachers opened the door and children walked outside. 

"Wait a minute. Let's see if he'll crawl outside, " one teacher said to another.

Daniel began crawling out the door, but about the time he got to the doorway he noticed something fascinating on the ground. 

I could see him pick it up in his hand and pull it close to his face to inspect the object of curiosity. The teacher, still holding the door patiently, just tilted her head to one side. The other teacher finally picked him up and took him outside.

Maybe Daniel's transition from baby to toddler won't be messy on all fronts. Some changes will be welcome, like sleeping the entire night; and others will make us remember with fondness when he was just a little bit more dependent on us, like when we're cleaning our kitchen floor after every meal.