Lethal Combination

Some things just don't belong together.  Oil and water.  Square pegs and round holes.  Tom and Katie.  New teeth and new walkers.

I'm not sure what in our evolutionary history would've selected for teeth to sprout at approximately the same time as walking begins.  It seems like something akin to running with scissors, only the scissors are actually implanted in your mouth.  When you're face-planting every tenth step, teeth are a real occupational hazard.  Not to mention the danger to the poor teeth themselves.  I now look at 3- and 4-year-old children with a sense of absolute amazement that they have a fully intact set of choppers.  

Thanks to the single snaggletooth protruding from his top gums, Owen has had three fat lips in three days.  During the last fall, Aaron and I actually came to terms with the fact that Owen might've knocked out his one and only pearly white, before the blood cleared and we could verify that the tooth was, in fact, still there.  

Maybe new teeth aren't only there to wreak senseless havoc on new walkers; maybe like spurs on a horse, they're meant to serve as a moderately painful incentive to start moving the right way.  Whatever the case, I'll put one in the win column if we can make it to preschool with an intact mouthful of teeth.

(Side note:  if you're thinking, "Hmm, it's weird that Owen only has one tooth at nearly ten months," you would be right.  The average age for tooth-growing is 4-8 months, and his first clocked in at 9.5 months.  He actually took his first steps before he had a single tooth in that little mouth.)

Transitioning from "has walked" to "is walking"

The latest iteration of Owen's dance moves

(Warning: do not watch more than once.  This song will haunt your dreams.)

Happy Fifth of July

Baby Steps

Last week, Owen "officially" walked for the first time.  I use the term loosely because it's nearly impossible to say what counts as "The First."  We've spent plenty of time watching him put one foot in front of the other in a walk-like fashion, but launching himself from Point A and toppling clumsily into Point B hardly seemed like a walk.  Or at least not the kind of walk I'd wish for him long-term.

No, all prior walks too closely resembled the gait of a drunken sailor.  But something finally seemed to click, and now the drunken sailor is sobering up and taking more purposeful, confident strides.  And yet if asked, I would say Owen "has walked" but I wouldn't say he "is walking."  Oh, the nuanced verb tenses of parenthood... 

Before becoming a mom, I imagined there would be one magical point in time when -- *presto* -- the kid would evolve from an all-fours crawler to a bona fide baby erectus.  Or one day when baby babble would suddenly transform into intelligible speech that required no parental translation.  Or one night when infants learned to love sleep as much as their parents and would stay down, uninterrupted, through the night for ever more.  To my former non-mom self, I say simply: you were a serious idiot. 

Now I know better.  Nothing about this child-rearing adventure is so clearly black and white.  Life does not progress linearly.  Things move forward and then revert, they ebb and they flow.  You take two steps forward and then crawl all the way back to where you started.  One day the kid learns to love carrots, and the next day he learns how to send them flying across the kitchen.  But really, the times when Owen propels himself haphazardly from one piece of furniture to another -- completely disregarding the fact that he doesn't yet know how to walk -- are way more fun to watch than boring old big-person steps.  

The real delight of parenthood comes less from reaching milestones and more from appreciating the path that exists in between them.  It comes from observing -- with loving patience and a healthy sense of humor -- as a Mini Person learns all about the world around him.  The joy, as they say, is in the journey, and what an entertaining journey it is.