Shock

I'm freaking out.

Lane is a person, a real one, all of a sudden.  Everything with him seems to happen in a week's time.  Things are going along, we are marking time with naps and bedtime routines, and all of a sudden I look over and he's different - in his eyes - just like that.

He is fully aware which is something you can see by the way he uses his eyes to watch things.  You can watch his thoughts.  He's been "talking" to everything, pointing at pictures in books and talking about what he sees (bubububu mostly).  When did this happen?  When did he learn to point? And to associate sounds with objects??

And then yesterday I set him down in the grass outside and he just decided to crawl the entire length of the yard away from me to explore a stump, knees up out of the grass in a spider crawl.  He didn't look back once to wonder where I was or get distracted with clover.  He just went.

People say this all the time, but in truth it feels like yesterday when I could set him down in the grass beside me and he'd happily play in one spot.  I could read him a book and he'd try to eat the pages instead of looking at them.  And suddenly I wake up and he's got preferences and a voice that fits actions and he crawls away from me confidently.