Monthly Milestone Quotes

It wasn't what lay at the end of her road that frightened Ammu as much as the nature of the road itself. No milestones marked its progress. No trees grew along it. No dappled shadows shaded it. No mists rolled over it. No birds circled it. No twists, no turns or hairpin bends obscured even momentarily, her clear view of the end. This filled Ammu with an awful dread, because she was not the kind of woman who wanted her future told. She dreaded it too much. So if she were granted one small wish perhaps it would have been Not to Know, Not to know what each day had in store for her. Not to know where she might be, next month, next year. Ten years on. Not to know which way her road might turn and what lay beyond the bend.

I cleared my throat and began my presentation. As I moved through the different aspects of the proposal, he stayed silent, staring directly at his copy. Why was he so calm? His temper tantrums I could handle. But the eerie silence? It was unnerving. I was leaning over the table, gesturing toward a set of graphs, when it happened. "Their timeline for the first milestone is a little ambi-" I stopped midsentence, my breath caught in my throat. His hand pressed gently into my lower back before sliding down, settling on the curve of my ass. In the nine months I had worked for him, he had never intentionally touched me. This was most definitely intentional.

Kate is now walking. She started at ten months, which is early according to the books. And while Ruth was proud of her daughter for reaching this milestone ahead of time (walking at ten months = first class honours degree from Cambridge), she can’t help thinking that it was easier when she could carry her everywhere.

Almost exactly one year after the Facebook deal, Instagram reached the milestone 150 million monthly active users. This is such an important milestone is that Instagram reached this number faster than Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn! The only site that has achieved this milestone faster than Instagram is Google+.

I hope you’ll take the next right step today and choose just one way to be kind. Then another. Then another. Then another. Here’s a few ideas to get you started. Write a thank-you note. Extend an invitation. Bring muffins to the office. Offer someone a ride to the airport. Donate blood. Challenge yourself to go a day without saying anything negative. Call your grandmother. Look at the month ahead for birthdays and plan something special for a friend or family member. Send a care package. Send congrats flowers for a friend who reached a new milestone. Make a double batch of soup and bring half to someone who just moved. Wave at kids on a school bus.

It is more important that milestones be sharp-edged and unambiguous than that they be easily verifiable by the boss. Rarely will a man lie about milestone progress, if the milestone is so sharp that he can't deceive himself. But if the milestone is fuzzy, the boss often understands a different report from that which the man gives.

She needed months, years, decades, centuries--or at the very least, however much of those God granted them. Together, though. Only, always together. Never apart again, they'd sworn that first night as they cried together over years and milestones lost, as they kissed away the thought of all those lonely days and nights, as they loved away the emptiness.

Moments of pride commemorate people’s achievements. We feel our chest puff out and our chin lift. 2. There are three practical principles we can use to create more moments of pride: (1) Recognize others; (2) Multiply meaningful milestones; (3) Practice courage. The first principle creates defining moments for others; the latter two allow us to create defining moments for ourselves. 3. We dramatically underinvest in recognition. • Researcher Wiley: 80% of supervisors say they frequently express appreciation, while less than 20% of employees agree. 4. Effective recognition is personal, not programmatic. (“ Employee of the Month” doesn’t cut it.) • Risinger at Eli Lilly used “tailored rewards” (e.g., Bose headphones) to show his team: I saw what you did and I appreciate it. 5. Recognition is characterized by a disjunction: A small investment of effort yields a huge reward for the recipient. • Kira Sloop, the middle school student, had her life changed by a music teacher who told her that her voice was beautiful. 6. To create moments of pride for ourselves, we should multiply meaningful milestones—reframing a long journey so that it features many “finish lines.” • The author Kamb planned ways to “level up”—for instance “Learn how to play ‘Concerning Hobbits’ from The Fellowship of the Ring”—toward his long-term goal of mastering the fiddle.

The first flight of a previously flown booster came a month later on a launch also from 39A. After the launch, an emotional Musk called it “an incredible milestone in the history of space,” one that SpaceX had been working toward for fifteen years. This, he said, would be what would ultimately lower the cost of spaceflight, perhaps by a factor of a hundred or more—“the key to opening up space, and becoming a spacefaring civilization, a multiplanetary species and having the future be incredibly exciting and inspiring.

Then he began writing the software that would get the microprocessor to display images on the screen. Because he could not afford to pay for computer time, he wrote the code by hand. After a couple of months he was ready to test it. "I typed a few keys on the keyboard and I was shocked! The letters were displayed on the screen." It was Sunday, June 29, 1975, a milestone for the personal computer. "It was the first time in history," Wozniak later said, "anyone had typed a character on a keyboard and seen it show up on their own computer's screen right in front of them.

Your team had to crunch for at least a month before each major milestone (E3, alpha, beta, etc.) and even though you bought them all dinners to make up for it, you still can’t stop thinking about the missed anniversaries, the lost birthday parties, and the evenings they didn’t get to spend with their kids because they were stuck in meetings about the best color schemes for your plumber’s overalls. Is there a way to make great video games without that sort of sacrifice? Is it possible to develop a game without putting in endless hours? Will there ever be a reliable formula for making games that allows for more predictable schedules?

Liberals in NY and LA love to scoff at Fox News, or as they all call it (as if they thought of it themselves), “Faux News.” Meanwhile, the rest of the nation respectfully disagrees. From Mediabistro, April 30, 2014: Fox News finished its 148th consecutive month as the top-rated cable news network. FNC’s hold on total viewers remains particularly strong, with the network beating CNN and MSNBC combined in every hour. The ratings for April 2014 (Nielsen Live + Same Day data): • Primetime (Mon–Sun): 1,614,000 total viewers / 296,000 A25–54 • Total Day (Mon–Sun): 960,000 total viewers / 201,000 A25–54 … [Also] it was a milestone month for “Fox & Friends,” which marks 150 consecutive months as the top-rated cable news morning show.

I felt guilty for not knowing all this, for being the kind of aunt who visits every other month, who sees all the milestones but misses the minutiae of their little lives. But being their aunt was a responsibility I hadn’t asked for, I told myself; I didn’t choose to have five extra humans in my life to love, and miss, and worry about, yet here they were. And even though they had all just recently come into being, I’d give my left lung to any one of them who needed it. I would kill for them. I would take a bullet for them. And let me be clear, there are very few people I would jump in front of a bullet for; it’s a shockingly short list, which takes a very long time to get on. But by merely existing, by doing no more than being born, these kids automatically get a spot on that list, along with my unwavering, unconditional, oftentimes totally irrational devotion. Once kids come along, loving them is not a choice, it’s an inevitability. And these aren’t even my kids!

was strange but true. And perhaps I’d known it in some way from the very beginning. Perhaps the impulse to purchase the PCT guidebook months before had been a primal grab for a cure, for the thread of my life that had been severed. I could feel it unspooling behind me—the old thread I’d lost, the new one I was spinning—while I hiked that morning, the snowy peaks of the High Sierras coming into occasional view. As I walked, I didn’t think of those snowy peaks. Instead, I thought of what I would do once I arrived at the Kennedy Meadows General Store that afternoon, imagining in fantastic detail the things I would purchase to eat and drink—cold lemonade and candy bars and junk food I seldom ate in my regular life. I pictured the moment when I would lay hands on my first resupply box, which felt to me like a monumental milestone, the palpable proof that I’d made it at least that far. Hello, I said to myself in anticipation of what I’d say once I arrived at the store, I’m a PCT hiker here to pick up my box. My name is Cheryl Strayed.

What are you doing here?” He wasn’t annoyed, exactly. He just seemed to find my presence unexpected, the way you might be surprised to discover your dog in the living room instead of in its crate. A different young staffer would have handled the situation gracefully. Perhaps they might have tried a high-minded approach: “I’m here to serve my country.” Or they might have kept things simple: “I’m hoping to catch typos.” Here is what I did instead. First, in a misguided effort to appear casual, I gave the leader of the free world a smile reminiscent of a serial killer who knows the jig is up. Then I said the following: “Oh, I’m just watching.” POTUS took a shallow breath through his nose. He raised his eyebrows, looked at our cameraman, and sighed. “It always makes me nervous when Litt’s around.” I’m 90 percent sure President Obama was half joking. Still, two months later, on my final POTUS trip, my stomach full of arugula and Brie, I was careful to avoid his eyes. Backstage in Detroit, POTUS went through his usual prespeech routine, shaking hands with the prompter operators and joking with personal aides. Then he stepped onstage to remind a roomful of autoworkers about the time he saved their industry seven years before. I had written plenty of auto speeches for President Obama. There was nothing especially new in this one. But as POTUS reached his closing paragraph, my eyes filled with tears. I had tried to prepare myself for each milestone: my last set of remarks for the president, my last ride in the motorcade, my last flight on Air Force One. Still, the nostalgia left me reeling. I fled the staff viewing area and found a men’s room. With my left hand, I steadied myself against the sink. With my right, I held all but the first page of my speech. You’re supposed to be an adult, I reminded myself. And adults don’t cry in front of their boss’s boss.

As Dr. Fauci’s policies took hold globally, 300 million humans fell into dire poverty, food insecurity, and starvation. “Globally, the impact of lockdowns on health programs, food production, and supply chains plunged millions of people into severe hunger and malnutrition,” said Alex Gutentag in Tablet Magazine.27 According to the Associated Press (AP), during 2020, 10,000 children died each month due to virus-linked hunger from global lockdowns. In addition, 500,000 children per month experienced wasting and stunting from malnutrition—up 6.7 million from last year’s total of 47 million—which can “permanently damage children physically and mentally, transforming individual tragedies into a generational catastrophe.”28 In 2020, disruptions to health and nutrition services killed 228,000 children in South Asia.29 Deferred medical treatments for cancers, kidney failure, and diabetes killed hundreds of thousands of people and created epidemics of cardiovascular disease and undiagnosed cancer. Unemployment shock is expected to cause 890,000 additional deaths over the next 15 years.30,31 The lockdown disintegrated vital food chains, dramatically increased rates of child abuse, suicide, addiction, alcoholism, obesity, mental illness, as well as debilitating developmental delays, isolation, depression, and severe educational deficits in young children. One-third of teens and young adults reported worsening mental health during the pandemic. According to an Ohio State University study,32 suicide rates among children rose 50 percent.33 An August 11, 2021 study by Brown University found that infants born during the quarantine were short, on average, 22 IQ points as measured by Baylor scale tests.34 Some 93,000 Americans died of overdoses in 2020—a 30 percent rise over 2019.35 “Overdoses from synthetic opioids increased by 38.4 percent,36 and 11 percent of US adults considered suicide in June 2020.37 Three million children disappeared from public school systems, and ERs saw a 31 percent increase in adolescent mental health visits,”38,39 according to Gutentag. Record numbers of young children failed to reach crucial developmental milestones.40,41 Millions of hospital and nursing home patients died alone without comfort or a final goodbye from their families. Dr. Fauci admitted that he never assessed the costs of desolation, poverty, unhealthy isolation, and depression fostered by his countermeasures. “I don’t give advice about economic things,”42 Dr. Fauci explained. “I don’t give advice about anything other than public health,” he continued, even though he was so clearly among those responsible for the economic and social costs.

If a baby continues growing at the same rate as in her first year, she'd be 170 feet tall as an adult.

Her first 12 months will see her come to understand the world around her, learn to recognise and communicate her needs, and develop an understanding of the language rules and expectations of her environment.

All babies are born with the same potential

Babies are born with the same number of neurons as adults but they haven't yet formed connections. Once connections are formed, the neurons become active

Across all cultures throughout history, babies were worn in carriers on their mother's chest, until around 6 months when they were moved to the back so they could see the world the same way mother could. It's long been believed that baby-wearing helps with infant emotional and Psychological development, promoting attachment and bonding between mother and baby. Studies have shown that carrying an infant an extra two hours a day reduces crying by 43%.

You can soothe her whenever she's poorly, teething or growing, simply by holding her. Comforting your baby is the most effective and rewarding way to to soothe her when she's distressed.

The first 2 weeks after birth, mother's body is flooded with hormones, designed to ensure baby's survival. Oxytocin, a powerful bonding hormone (known as the love hormone) creates the euphoric feeling following childbirth and is the reason you're bursting with love for your new baby.

The first 9 months of a baby's life is often referred to as 'the second 9 months' or 'the fourth trimester

Leaving your baby to cry for extended periods triggers the release of cortisol into her bloodstream.

Your (newborn) baby will usually cry for one of the following reasons. She will either be hungry, tired/overwhelmed, or lonely/afraid. Each of these can be alleviated with breastfeeding. The hormones in your breast milk contain Oxytocin, a powerful 'happy hormone', which blocks cortisol from being released. This immediately inhibits the stress response and calms baby

researchers have even discovered that a newborn baby's grip is so strong that she can support her own body weight on one hand when she's dangled. (Don't ever, ever test this out, for your own baby's safety).

skin-to-skin contact triggers Oxytocin (the love hormone) to be released in both baby and mum. This encourages bonding between mother and baby, and it's more than likely the reason why midwives recommend immediate skin-to-skin contact after birth

If your baby doesn't like tummy time, don't worry too much, and don't force her to lay on her front. As a species, humans have carried their babies on their bodies in slings and swaddles for thousands of years. Tummy time is a relatively new concept and traditionally, parents didn't lay babies on their tummies

Toe walking is common in the early weeks but if your baby continues this habit, mention it to her doctor. (Prolonged toe-walking can cause problems later on life).

Let your baby choose whether she wants broccoli or peas with her dinner, and what colour socks she wants to wear. Small choices will give your baby a sense of control over her environment and help her to feel more independent. This is a great way to reduce tantrums and defiant behaviour

The magic of raising a baby will stay with you for a lifetime

We take for granted the profound, innate abilities our babies are born with

The love you shower upon your baby in the early weeks will truly last a lifetime. Bear this in mind as you raise your precious baby.

There are billions of tiny nerve endings underneath your baby's skin throughout her body, including the soles of her feet and palms of her hands. These nerve endings act like receptors, taking information from the outside world and sending it back up to baby's brain via a feedback loop along her nervous system.

There's an undeniable correlation between our early experiences and our later outlook on life.

There are a number of things you can do to support, stimulate and enhance your baby's development in her first 12 months, but she will ultimately develop at her own pace and in her own time.

In her first year of life, your baby's brain will double in size and by her first birthday it will be half the size of an adult brain.

We evolved as humans by carrying our babies on our bodies to ensure baby's welfare, protection and survival.

her arms and legs are curled up and she wont be able to extend them yet. This is a survival mechanism designed to keep your baby safe when she's most vulnerable. Similar to a hedgehog curling up into a ball when threat of danger, your baby instinctively remains in the foetal position until she's developed the strength to extend her limbs

The cells of your baby's body are unable to grow without loving contact. The genome responsible for growth enzymes stops production without loving contact. With only a few loving strokes, the genome is signalled and growth begins again.

Everything your baby experiences now will have a lasting impact on her cognitive growth in infancy, her core beliefs, sense of self, self-worth and her emerging personality.

If your baby starts reaching out to grab everything in sight, it's a sign that she's seeking stimulation.

Your baby will reach these milestones in her own time and when she's ready. Gentle encouragement may help her along but pushing her before she's ready will be counterproductive and harm her development in the long run.

What was once a mass of potential is now a complex system of neural pathways firing and storing information rapidly. These newly-formed neural pathways in your baby's brain lay the foundations for her later personality and ability to interact with the world.

Nature designed mothers to and babies to bond via the release of Oxytocin to ensure survival of our species. When a new baby is born, her mother's body is also flooded with this hormone, creating a feeling of euphoria

At 6 months old, your baby is halfway through her first year. She's passed through crucial developmental stages and has progressed from being wholly reliant upon your for her survival, to being able to move and communicate independently.

There are thousands of tiny nerve endings in the soles of your baby's feet which send feedback to her brain via her nervous system. Every time she takes a step, the nerve endings receive information from the ground beneath and send that information to her brain. Her brain then uses this information to form neural connections. This is how all habits are formed. These neural connections eventually group together to form the region of her brain responsible for your baby's ability to walk.

The way you treat your child as a baby lays the foundation for your later relationship with her, and consequently, her later relationships with others.

Some events can be seen as milestones only in retrospect, while at the time they pass almost unnoticed. This was not such an event. The court circular for January 28, 1988, spelled it out in black and white: Jephson was going to the Palace and an insistent inner voice told me his life would never be the same again. Reaction among my friends and relations was mixed. The American, Doug, thought it was a quaint English fairy tale. My father thought it inevitably meant promotion (he was wrong). My stepmother thought it was nice (she was mostly right). My brother thought it would make me an unbearably smug nuisance (no change). Although I would never have admitted it, I thought I must be pretty clever, and I apologize belatedly to everyone who had to witness it. That was lesson one: breathing royal air can seriously damage your ability to laugh at yourself. It is sometimes called “red-carpet fever” and usually only lasts a few months, but severe cases never recover and spend the rest of their lives believing in their own acquired importance.

The way this generation is so messed up, 3 months in a relationship, it's a milestone to celebrated.

Alpha: At this milestone, key gameplay functionality is implemented, assets are 40–50% final (the rest are placeholders), the game runs on the correct hardware platform in debug mode, and there is enough working to provide the team with a feel for the game. Features might undergo major adjustments at this point, based on play-testing results and other feedback. Alpha occurs 8 to 10 months before code release.

After Arvid had learned in fall 2018 the cancer had returned, he devoted two months crafting letters to each of his children that he instructed be read on their twenty-first, twenty-eighth, thirty-fifth, and forty-fifth birthdays. He chose each year because those years were significant in his own life: official adulthood, the age he got married, the age he became vice principal, and the age he learned the cancer had returned. The letters were personalized to each Shastri-Persson for each milestone. The twenty-first-birthday letter was an assortment of memories and anecdotes about each child; the twenty-eighth letter was advice on love, friendships, and relationships; the thirty-fifth letter was Arvid's thoughts on the importance of kindness and generosity, on both a grand scale and small; and the forty-fifth was simply a list of songs Arvid asked that they listen to on their birthdays at a location of great significance to them. He signed off with the same sentence in all four letters: "Celebrate each remaining birthday in a way that is meaningful to you. Each one is precious and extraordinary, and so you are to me. I love you, and I am with you always. Take care of each other. Love, Dad.

The CEO and executive team are mostly staring way out on the horizon—50 percent of their time is spent planning for a fuzzy, distant future months or years away, 25 percent is focused on upcoming milestones in the next month or two, and the last 25 percent is spent putting out fires happening right now at their feet. They also look at all the parallel lines to make sure everyone is keeping up and going in the same direction.

After a rocky start, Getting Rid of Richard was picking up steam and when I hit page fifty I felt as though a milestone had been reached, while at the same time I felt increasingly anxious about the number of pages still to come. Then I realized that if I were to persevere, I had to stop dwelling on the road ahead and concentrate on the here and now. With that in mind, I resolved to write a minimum of three pages a day from then on and not think beyond those pages. If I did that faithfully six days a week, at the end of six months I would have a completed manuscript. Although it was hard to believe, I told myself that numbers don't lie.

It is more important that milestones be sharp-edged and unambiguous than that they be easily verifiable by the boss. Rarely will a man lie about milestone progress, if the milestone is so sharp that he can't deceive himself. But if the milestone is fuzzy, the boss often understands a different report from that which the man gives. To supplement Sophocles, no one enjoys bearing bad news, either, so it gets softened without any real intent to deceive.

Beyond Baby Steps: The 5 Ages and Stages of Your Child’s Growth and Development Parenting is a marvelous journey, and witnessing all of the baby’s development stages can leave you dewy-eyed. However, the baby’s milestones feel like a fleeting period; snap your fingers and your teeny tiny ones are not so tiny anymore! From those first reluctant steps to the terrible twos, the childhood developmental stages reveal new wonders and challenges at each turn. It’s a ride marked by infant milestones and baby developmental stages month by month, unveiling the beautiful journey ahead. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the ages and stages of infant milestones and a child’s growth and development so that you don’t miss any precious baby milestones.

I was proud of how normal I sounded when my insides were doing things that were anything but normal. Fluttering, skipping, twisting. My doctor would have a field day. “We’ve passed a milestone. Rhys Larsen’s first compliment to Bridget von Ascheberg, and it only took two years. Mark it down.” Rhys snorted, but humor filled his eyes. “One year and ten months,” he said. “If we’re counting.” Which he was. If my heart skipped any more songs it’d have no playlist left. Not good. Not good at all.

The CEO and executive team are mostly staring way out on the horizon—50 percent of their time is spent planning for a fuzzy, distant future months or years away, 25 percent is focused on upcoming milestones in the next month or two, and the last 25 percent is spent putting out fires happening right now at their

The CEO and executive team are mostly staring way out on the horizon—50 percent of their time is spent planning for a fuzzy, distant future months or years away, 25 percent is focused on upcoming milestones in the next month or two, and the last 25 percent is spent putting out fires happening right now at their feet. They also look at all the parallel lines to make sure everyone is keeping up and going in the same direction. Managers usually keep their eyes focused 2–6 weeks out. Those projects are pretty fleshed out and detailed, though they still have some fuzzy bits around the edges. Managers’ heads should be on a swivel—they often look down, sometimes look further out, and spend a fair amount of time

If your satisfaction is only tied to achieving big goals, you may wait weeks, months or years to feel accomplished. Get emotionally fired-up by completing small milestones to gain momentum.

And then you arrive on the scene... A Family. They bring you home from the hospital, at which point everything speeds up. It's a montage of first moments, all of the major and minor milestones: first step, first word, first time sleeping through the night. There are a few years in a family when, if everything goes right, the parents aren't alone anymore, they've been raising their own companion, the kid who's going to make them less alone in the world and for those years they are less alone. It's a blur - dense, raucous, exhausting - feelings and thoughts all jumbled together into days and semesters, routines and first times, rolling along, rambling along, summer nights with all the windows open, lying on top of the covers, and darkening autumn mornings when no one wants to get out of bed, getting ready, getting better at things, wins and losses and days when it doesn't go anyone's way at all, and then, just as chaos begins to take some kind of shape, present itself not as a random series of emergencies and things you could have done better, the calendar, the months and years and year after year, stacked up in a messy pile starts to make sense, the sweetness of it all, right at that moment, the first times start turning into last times, as in, last first day of school, last time he crawls into bed with us, last time you'll all sleep together like this, the three of you. There are a few years when you make almost all of your important memories. And then you spend the next few decades reliving them.

Cosgrove advocates treating all plans, milestones, and schedules as tentative, so as to facilitate change. This goes much too far—the common failing of programming groups today is too little management control, not too much. Nevertheless, he offers a great insight. He observes that the reluctance to document designs is not due merely to laziness or time pressure. Instead it comes from the designer's reluctance to commit himself to the defense of decisions which he knows to be tentative. "By documenting a design, the designer exposes himself to the criticisms of everyone, and he must be able to defend everything he writes. If the organizational structure is threatening in any way, nothing is going to be documented until it is completely defensible." Structuring an organization for change is much harder than designing a system for change. Each man must be assigned to jobs that broaden him, so that the whole force is technically flexible. On a large project the manager needs to keep two or three top programmers as a technical cavalry that can gallop to the rescue wherever the battle is thickest. Management structures also need to be changed as the system changes. This means that the boss must give a great deal of attention to keeping his managers and his technical people as interchangeable as their talents allow.

As the year draws to a close, a sense of anticipation mingles with reflection. We stand at the threshold of a new chapter, ready to bid farewell to the familiar & embrace the unknown. In this transitional month, it’s essential to cultivate a healthy, energized & determined attitude, setting the stage for a remarkable finish to 2023 & a vibrant beginning to 2024. Darling listen – I want you to use this new month to do & say all the things that you’ve been putting off. The perfect time to say & do those things that matters is now. I also wish & hope that instead of focusing on what you haven’t achieved, you focus on the milestones you’ve crossed, the growth you’ve experienced & the resilience you’ve demonstrated. Let you celebrate your victories (both big and small) & carry the lessons of your setbacks into the new year. Sweetheart, December, a month of festivities, of togetherness, celebrations, of spreading cheers & goodwill, is the perfect time to cherish all the moments spent with loved ones, the memories created & the lessons learned. Let this month bring you the breakthrough you’ve been waiting for & a pie so big that you’ll need a truck to carry it home… Cheers to a season of success & sweet treats!

No matter how much preparation time you get, start planning what you hope to accomplish by specific milestones. Even a few hours of preentry planning can go a long way. Begin by thinking about your first day in the new job. What do you want to do by the end of that day? Then move to the first week. Then focus on the end of the first month, the second month, and finally the three-month mark. These plans will be sketchy, but the simple act of beginning to plan will help clear your head.

When my firstborn turned six months old, I decided that this milestone was definitely worth celebrating. And what started as a one-off event quickly became a family tradition: For my kids' half birthdays I make half a cake (it looks like someone just cut a cake down the middle and made the other half disappear), and we sing every other syllable of the "Happy Birthday" song (I'm really good at complicating things, and singing only the first half of the song seemed unfair to the second half). We don't do gifts or a big bash, and we don't blow out candles and make wishes, because wishes should be made only full throttle. We just end the day with a little celebration after dinner, something kind of silly and fun. And cake. Because everything in life should end with sugar.

It wasn’t what lay at the end of her road that frightened Ammu as much as the nature of the road itself. No milestones marked its progress. No trees grew along it. No dappled shadows shaded it. No mists rolled over it. No birds circled it. No twists, no turns or hairpin bends obscured even momentarily, her clear view of the end. This filled Ammu with an awful dread, because she was not the kind of woman who wanted her future told. She dreaded it too much. So if she were granted one small wish perhaps it would only have been Not to Know. Not to know what each day held in store for her. Not to know where she might be, next month, next year. Ten years on. Not to know which way her road might turn and what lay beyond the bend. And Ammu knew. Or thought she knew, which was really just as bad (because if in a dream you’ve eaten fish, it means you’ve eaten fish).

The muscles that allow us to talk are strengthened when we chew and swallow. As baby progresses from rooting for a nipple at birth, to more robust sucking, to eating her first mushy solids at age four to six months, she is preparing to utter her first words. Certain speech milestones correlate directly to baby’s eating milestones, for example, taking single sips from an open cup (not a sippy cup or bottle) correlates with advanced lip-movement sounds such as “w,” and being able to move food around inside the mouth enables baby to properly enunciate her words.

And then you arrive on the scene, Baby Willis. A little tiny Kung Fu Boy. And for a moment the backstories and fragments and scenes filled with background players and nonspeaking parts, it all makes a kind of sense, all of it leading to this. A family. They bring you home from the hospital, at which point everything speeds up. It’s a montage of first moments, all of the major and minor milestones: first step, first word, first time sleeping through the night. There are a few years in a family when, if everything goes right, the parents aren’t alone anymore, they’ve been raising their own companion, the kid who’s going to make them less alone in the world and for those years they are less alone. It’s a blur—dense, raucous, exhausting—feelings and thoughts all jumbled together into days and semesters, routines and first times, rolling along, rambling along, summer nights with all the windows open, lying on top of the covers, and darkening autumn mornings when no one wants to get out of bed, getting ready, getting better at things, wins and losses and days when it doesn’t go anyone’s way at all, and then, just as chaos begins to take some kind of shape, present itself not as a random series of emergencies and things you could have done better, the calendar, the months and years and year after year, stacked up in a messy pile starts to make sense, the sweetness of it all, right at that moment, the first times start turning into last times, as in, last first day of school, last time he crawls into bed with us, last time you’ll all sleep together like this, the three of you. There are a few years when you make almost all of your important memories. And then you spend the next few decades reliving them.

INTRODUCTION 0 to 3 MONTHS 1. Make the most of your hospital stay 2. Take care of your postpartum body 3. Take baby to the pediatrician . . . several times 4. Take newborn photos 5. Figure out breastfeeding 6. Get some sleep! 7. Manage Mom and Dad 8. Celebrate baby’s first milestones 9. Survive baby witching hour 10. Watch out for the blues 11. Get back in the sack 12. Get out of the house 13. Think about babywearing 3 to 6 MONTHS 14. Find your village 15. Prepare to go back to work, or not 16. Start some routines 17. Tame teething 18. Think about sleep training, or not 19. Teach baby sign language 20. Create a photo book 21. Reconnect with your partner 22. Don’t obsess over percentiles 23. Survive baby’s first illness 24. Make “me time” a priority 25. Interview sitters 26. Ready, Set, Eat: Start solid foods 6 to 9 MONTHS 27. Time to babyproof 28. Deal with separation anxiety 29. Work on those motor skills 30. Get back to your workouts 31. Plan a getaway 32. Start brushing teeth 33. Make mom friends 34. Start traditions 9 to 12 MONTHS 35. Get an adjustment 36. Ask for help 37. Think about discipline 38. Think about weaning, or not 39. Sign up for a mommy-and-me (or daddy-and-me) class 40. Take care of your diet 41. Capture your memories 42. Reignite your style 43. Embrace your new body 44. Trust your instincts 45. Book a couple’s getaway 46. Get your affairs in order 47. Do a cake smash photo shoot 48. Find a hobby 49. Learn to save money 50. Celebrate baby’s first birthday

And so I can always find this, here is the best thing I have read about the experience of being a parent: "And then you arrive on the scene... A Family. They bring you home from the hospital, at which point everything speeds up. It's a montage of first moments, all of the major and minor milestones: first step, first word, first time sleeping through the night. There are a few years in a family when, if everything goes right, the parents aren't alone anymore, they've been raising their own companion, the kid who's going to make them less alone in the world and for those years they are less alone. It's a blur - dense, raucous, exhausting - feelings and thoughts all jumbled together into days and semesters, routines and first times, rolling along, rambling along, summer nights with all the windows open, lying on top of the covers, and darkening autumn mornings when no one wants to get out of bed, getting ready, getting better at things, wins and losses and days when it doesn't go anyone's way at all, and then, just as chaos begins to take some kind of shape, present itself not as a random series of emergencies and things you could have done better, the calendar, the months and years and year after year, stacked up in a messy pile starts to make sense, the sweetness of it all, right at that moment, the first times start turning into last times, as in, last first day of school, last time he crawls into bed with us, last time you'll all sleep together like this, the three of you. There are a few years when you make almost all of your important memories. And then you spend the next few decades reliving them.