Walking Wonder

just turned 16-months-old, and more than ever I’m lamenting the passing of his babyhood.

Ike is a already big kid at nearly 30 lbs and something like 32 inches tall (I didn’t quite catch that stat at his last check up and he’s too wiggly to measure at home). Soon the time is coming when he’s not going to be able to ball up in my arms with his knees to my chest and his head on my shoulder, arms down, ready for sleep. He’s starting to talk more and he can make his needs known pretty clearly. He’s also really turning into an who wants to make everyone laugh.

But there is one big boy thing he’s not doing: walking. As such, I’m not yet lamenting the inevitable melt of his chubby thighs, but I am starting to wonder whether the little man will ever get on his feet. He doesn’t seem to have any sort of physical problem – the boy is very steady on his feet when he’s cruising using our coffee table or holding our fingers to take a stroll. He just shows little interest in standing on his own two feet because he is moving along just fine right now, so why bother with a new more precarious technique?

You may recall that a few months ago I was lamenting that he wasn’t yet crawling. Of course now he’s crawling all over the place so quickly that I wonder why I ever wanted to urge him along that path – chasing him around is tiring. And I’m certain I’ll be singing the same tune about walking when he finally gets down to doing it, which has to be any day now or else surely he’s secretly out to break some kind of Guinness Book record.

Either way, the poor kid can’t win: He’s not walking, so a tiny part of me worries that he’ll always be behind his peers, even though I know that’s not how this whole child development thing works at all. And when he does start walking, I’ll just see it as one more sign that my baby is growing up too quickly before my eyes.