Milestones...

Life. Life is a crazy thing, everything is measured. How tall are you? How old are you? How many years have you been in school? What time is it? How many miles apart are your friends houses?
Everything has a measurement: there are two semesters in a year of college, there are four quarters in a football game, seven continents, 12 inches in a foot, the alphabet has 26 letters, Fifty nifty United States, sixty minutes in an hour, and an infinite number of stars in the universe.
We can measure light, sound, height, weight, blood pressure, time, we measure everything in its own unique way.
During all of the chaos of numbers, symbols, and measurements we can get lost and go crazy so what do we do... we make milestones.
Tommy's kindergarten class has a fancy way of counting it starts off normal: 1, 2, 3, 4, and then they clap at number 5, normal again for 6, 7, 8, 9, and then out of nowhere all of the kindergarteners throw their hands in the air and say YAY! for number 10. The cycle repeats and every "5" (i.e. 5, 15, 25...) they clap and every "10" (i.e. 10, 20, 30...) they celebrate!
I feel that life is much like Tommy's kindergarten counting method. We go through our daily lives and "clap" for a milestone-winning a game or getting an award from school. Then we "YAY" with our hands in the air for grand milestones- Graduating High School/College, getting Married, having a baby and such.
Well today was a "Grand Milestone", Tommy lost tooth number 4... now I know that may not be very "grand" to most people, but having a child, and seeing that toothless grin and watching their little teeth come in and they learn to eat, and smile with their big grins, and when they lose their first tooth and how funny they look and how they have to reinvent how they eat because there is a big space that was helping bite off a piece of steak is now gone.
Enjoying each milestone, Finding out your pregnant, going through the 9 months and all of the doctor visits, the ultrasounds. Delivering your precious bundle of joy and watching every move they make. Watching them change everyday and grow in so many ways, watching them sit up, crawl, pull themselves up, walk, run, talk, play, interact with you, and other children their size. Just watch them develop and conquer each "YAY" milestone, and before you know it they will be standing in a cap and gown, at the alter, or in the delivery room ready to start the process all over again.
Life, no matter how you measure it... its a Grand Event!