Family milestones: it’s the little things

With twelve years of marriage and three children, Courtney & I have a lot of milestones to look back at: first meetings, first kiss, our wedding, births, first words and first steps, travels, graduations, tests and awards; moments you realize as a parent or partner that something has come a way, and that your life is moving forward.

Today I made a small but very symbolic adjustment in the kitchen. I keep a sticker on the oatmeal can, with the measurements for making three servings of oatmeal, because I can never remember the exact proportions (I think this is because I make oatmeal early in the morning, when my brain isn’t awake yet). For as long as I can remember making oatmeal for this my family, I’ve always needed to make three servings (for the four of us: two adults and two children). As the boys grew, I adjusted the amount slightly by adding a little of everything, but I still only needed to use the three servings recipe. This morning however, I realized that since Abraham has gone from eating tiny little baby tasting portions to actually having oatmeal for breakfast, and since the boys are a little bit bigger, I needed a new sticker with the measurements for four large servings, rather than three normal servings. A small adjustment you might think, but at that moment, it became so obvious to me that it wasn’t just ‘Courtney, I and the boys’ anymore, or even ‘Courtney, I, the boys and the baby’ anymore; we had suddenly become a large family. (Not large like my friend Ann’s family of ten, but still.) So this morning, I wrote down the new proportions for making porridge for our family on a sticker that I stuck on the oatmeal can; what a milestone!