THE WONDER WEEKS: A STRESS-FREE GUIDE TO YOUR BABY'S BEHAVIOR by Xaviera Plas-Plooij ⭐⭐⭐⭐

There may come a time in the early days of parenting when you look at your spouse and say, “Jesus, the baby is really on one this week.” They seem super clingy and fussy, and won’t stop fighting everything you try to do. God forbid you happen to be traveling when all this goes down. The usual tricks that would’ve always worked suddenly don’t anymore, and you’re left wondering what kind of hurricane is brewing inside your innocent child.

We experienced this phenomenon multiple times over the last eighteen months. We’d find ourselves days into a sleepless stretch of screeching and sound machines before some intuition told me to check the app that goes with this book.

And every.

Single.

Time.

We’d discover that we were in the thick of the next development leap.

If I had read those last couple paragraphs on the back cover of this book, I would’ve called them out as just a clever story to get me to buy it. And yet, I lived it. The timing was always perfect, the descriptions of her behavior as if they were being written down in real time. Every time I saw the app and realized how on point it was, I felt like I was living in a simulation. This book is the real deal.

It’s no easy feat going from fetus to toddler. The brain and body make the transition over a series of ‘leaps’, basically ten hurdles each kid must conquer in order to process the world around them. You can tell when one of these leaps is upon you because your child will suddenly appear to go three steps backward for a few weeks. And then, as if it was all a dream, they wake up one day looking and sounding like a totally different, capable, upgraded little human. It will rock your world and make you realize that life is marching forward a lot faster than you want it to.

I’m in disbelief that this book that I started at the beginning of this parenting journey has finally run it’s course. This is an excellent book for sympathizing with your child’s development struggles. The book can get repetitive, but you can easily skim to the important parts. It also comes with a bunch of recommendations for guiding your child through each of the rough patches they have no choice but to go through. And thankfully, a few tips for keeping your own sanity along the way.

Because trust me — there will be days you’ll want all the help you can get.