The Undiscovered Country

Standing Tall

A few weeks ago I took Thomas to an indoor play area at the mall. It’s nothing fancy. In an enclosed area of about 30 feet by 15 feet there are two tiny slides, a canoe, a tunnel, and large animals for children to climb on and over. Against the walls are permanent puzzles and movable objects such as gears.

At that point he could stand up with help and remain so with something to hold on to. He still scooted more than crawled, and couldn’t sit up by himself yet. But I figured he’d enjoy himself, especially with other children around.

On a Saturday, plenty of children ran and played while parents sat in the benches surrounding the inside of the play area and watched or chatted.

Not surprising to me, Thomas at first watched the other children played then scooted over to the gear puzzle.

I stood him up, and backed away a bit so he could practice standing and play with the puzzle. A little boy walked up and tried to stomp on Thomas’ foot to get him to back away from the puzzle. Thomas just glanced at him, then continued playing.

What astonished me wasn’t the boy’s attempted bullying, but how short he was. By the expertise of the boy’s walking, he had to be at least 18 months old. Yet Thomas towered over him by at least five inches. I wasn’t concerned about the other boy, because since Thomas ignored the boy, the boy lost interest and ran off elsewhere. He did come back a few minutes later as Thomas crawled around the floor and tried to kick him. The boy didn’t have any weight behind the kick, so it ended up a mere tap. Thomas again merely glanced at him then went on his merry way. I thought it was kind of funny, actually.

I studied the other toddlers, and each one was far shorter than Thomas.

I now understood why, according to the average growth of children Thomas, as of his last appointment a month ago is in the 93rd percentile of height for children his age (30 inches. One more inch and he'll be half my height). He’s also quite skinny at a feathery 17 lbs.

I added it up, and since his birth, Thomas has grown one inch a month, but only gained one pound a month.

Since I last took him to the indoor play yard, he can now crawl on his hands and knees, sit up from almost any position, and stand up if he has something to grab onto.

To give an idea on how much he’s grown, here’s a photo I took of him at almost three months old sitting in his grandfather’s chair:



The next one I took from the same chair a few days ago:


We ate BBQ ribs a few weeks ago, and I gave him a bone. He loved it as you can see from this photo:



To give you an even better idea of how tall Thomas is, I took these yesterday as he stood by my rocking chair: