Directions: After
reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and
grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank
with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that
best fits each blank.
How
can my son be a year old already?
My son turned one last week. The day marked
the end of {#blank#}1{#/blank#} has been both the longest and shortest
year of my life. I haven't slept for a year and I don't really know how time
works any more. From the instant he was born, it's felt {#blank#}2{#/blank#} my son has always been part of this
family.
How is he one already? First he was born,
and was a sleepy ball of flesh then, and now in his place is a little boy who {#blank#}3{#/blank#} walk and has teeth and knows how to
switch off the television at precisely the most important moment of anything I
ever try to watch. It's not exactly {#blank#}4{#/blank#} (extraordinary) development in all of
human history — child gradually gets older — but it's the first time I {#blank#}5{#/blank#} (see) it close up. It's honestly quite
hard to grasp. Even photos of him {#blank#}6{#/blank#} (take) last week seem like a different
boy. He's leaving milestone after milestone in his tiny parts of me along with
them.
He'll never again be the tiny baby who lay
in my arm, {#blank#}7{#/blank#} (suck) on my little finger in the
middle of the night while his mum slept, {#blank#}8{#/blank#} will he be the baby amazed by the
taste of solid food. Soon enough he'll stop being the baby who rests his head
on my shoulder whenever he gets tired, or laughs uncontrollably whenever I say
the word 'teeth' for reasons, {#blank#}9{#/blank#} I don't think I'll ever work out.
But I've had a year of this and it's ok. He's
never going to stop changing, and I don't want him to. This sadness, this
constant sense of loss, of time slipping just {#blank#}10{#/blank#} your grasp, is an important part of
this process. He won't realise this, of course. He's got years of unbroken
progress ahead of him, where everything will always be new. Years of his life
will pass in a moment and he won't be able to understand where they've gone.
But it's ok. You can't freeze time. You
just have to make the most of what you have.