One of the things about parenting that I find interesting - I was just talking about this with a friend yesterday, in fact - is the way milestones work. It seems like parents-by-adoption are a little more obsessed over developmental hurdles, and for good reason - institutional infancy has a way of interfering with development in lots of little ways. For example, when we met Daughter, she was just turning 1 and had yet to learn to crawl. She could roll around and grasp things, but she'd never had enough time just lying on the floor to get the hang of moving from point A to point B. Now she's a ballerina.

That's the interesting thing, to me. Both those common metaphors - milestones and hurdles - describe singular events. It's not like there's a gradual slope upward on the road of maturation. There's a series of these big, sudden changes - a digital process, not an analog one. A switch is flipped, and then - bang! - not a baby, but a toddler. (This is not unlike the process of adoption itself, actually, in which you wait and wait and then - bang! - there's a photo in the mail, and then - bang! - you're far from home being a parent to strange new creature.)

Which is all by way of introducing the fact that son (son!) has spent the last week talking. I'm not sure if he'd be officially considered "delayed" any more, so we're looking for other things to worry about at night. For him, this is a great new game. You point to a thing (or, more often, a picture of a thing - I'm sure a Lacanian would have something to say about that). You name the thing. You make a big smile. Parents squeal ecstatically. Then you do it again.

The two words (or, um, images) he seems most enthusiastic about are "truck" and "flower" (which he pronounces "shloweh"). He'll point to a truck, or a picture of a truck, and say, "truck." And we squeal ecstatically. Can't help ourselves.

He's also asking what things are called by pointing and saying, "Da!"

What's even more pleasing is that this breakthrough seems to have pleased him on some fundamental level as well. His frustration levels have dropped and small things make him laugh.

It feels good to clear a hurdle. Now, let's see what the next one will be.