Baby books are filled with milestones that parents date and journal as they happen. If it’s not the first baby, the milestones are memories and stories that you share instead of writing. First steps. First day of kindergarten. Bicycles. Foods. All the little moments that accumulate to adulthood.

Nobody tells you that your mental scrapbook of memories will capture and hold tightly that first conversation you have with your child that is adult to adult. The sheer joy of the casualness that you have reached together. No awkwardness. No filters. A plateau milestone that feels like finding the last piece of the puzzle.

The warm fuzzy of being the parent of adults is the self actualization you weren’t expecting.