Summer has officially been over in our household for over a week, with the commencement of the school year. This past week was the first full week of school, and it was the second straight week where Maia spent all 5 days at the sitter. Though Jackie is beginning her 11th year as a teacher, and this is our second school year beginning with Maia, it feels like the new school year is such a shock to all of our systems. Maia has yet to develop a good nap routine at the sitter's, which occasionally make the evenings longer; and everything starts much earlier in the morning for both Jackie and I. All in all, I think everyone in the house was pretty tired at the end of this week, and it seems both Maia and Jackie have each gotten a welcome back to the school year cold.
But, another part of the school year routine is Maia and I usually having breakfast by ourselves each morning. Similar to the prior school years, I get the "morning routine," of getting Maia to the sitter before I leave for work. Earlier this week, during breakfast, I found myself reminiscing about that routine, and all the breakfasts, and how quickly things have changed.
When the routine started, either Jackie or I would give Maia her bottle, and that was it. Pretty easy. Then she went to baby food, purees, etc. and every morning consisted of all the creative ways one could think of how to get a spoon into a sometimes cooperative baby mouth. Then it evolved into cutting everything (every darn thing) into small pieces as she worked with her hands to feed herself (and being thankful every morning we had Ellie to pick up all the food dropped on the floor). Then we slowly started using our own utensils to feed ourselves (and still being thankful for Ellie). So that now, Maia will often have cereal or oatmeal in the morning, using her spoon with little difficulty.
In hindsight, its amazing how fast it went. From her being completely dependent on us to feed her that bottle, to now almost being an afterthought as she sits (mostly) contently in her chair feeding herself "real" (non-baby) food. In some ways, I miss the tiny little human that depended so completely on us for everything. In other ways, its amazing to see our 20 month old daughter doing so much independently (especially when it felt like we waited forever for her to roll herself over). Maia is obviously still a little human, but I was struck about how much growth and development occurred in such a relatively short time. For whatever reason, as she was gladly eating her oatmeal this morning, I found that development remarkable.
I'll occasionally still miss the little tyke who had to be carried everywhere. But its also pretty fun to sit at the table each morning and have great conversations with Maia about what she wants and why she wants to feed Ellie. Who knows what our breakfast time will look like in another 20 months.
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