Don't Rush

Paddy will start preschool in a week, a milestone I am approaching with both excitement and sadness.  I can't believe my baby boy will turn 4 in a few months.  I have been home with him since he was 23 months old and reluctantly enrolled him in preschool.  He is definitely ready even though I'm not sure that I am.  I wish that when he was born I realized that I didn't need to rush all of his milestones.  I was anxious to begin solid foods, stressed about when he would walk and utter his first words.  I thought that he needed to be potty trained quickly and strategically placed a potty chair in our living room with no apologies to friends and family who visited.  I felt pressure to wean him from breastfeeding and to take away his pacifier.  It seemed that he would never sleep in his own bed.  His crib remains an extremely expensive oak laundry basket as his brother refuses to sleep in it as well.
 
Needless to say my almost 4 year old uses the toilet, eats solid foods, can walk, speaks quite fluently, does not use a pacifier and sleeps in his own bed.  I remember someone telling me once that she doubted he would go to the prom with his pacifier.  So why the internal pressure to rush through all of these milestones?  I wish that I had trusted that he would reach them in time.  This means that there are pictures of him at 18 months with a  pacifier in his mouth (we just got home from the dentist where he received kudos for his wonderful teeth).  He nursed until he was 2 years 10 months old and left our bed soon after weaning (I was pregnant at the time).  Looking back I wish that I was able to ignore all of the pressure I felt, most of it self inflicted.  I feel like I have a second chance at taking things slowly but now I have two kids and life seems to go by even faster.  Gabriel is already trying to sit up and roll over.  He stares at our food and if he had control over his body would probably reach over and steal it from our plates.  I hope that I will take my own advice and not feel so rushed this time.  I need to trust that, just like his brother, Gabriel will reach all over those firsts when he is ready and that he will not have a pacifier in his pocket at his senior prom.