Growing up fast but not fast enough?

CLEVELAND - It’s been 13 months since Mason was born, but it feels like just yesterday Mandi and I were sitting in the living room trying to figure out how to take care of a 4-day-old baby that we had just brought home from the hospital.

People who have kids always told me that they grow up so fast, they really do and I will write about the speed at which change occurs in a future post. This post is going to cover my unrealistic goals of progress.

I had unrealistic goals in the beginning on how I thought Mason should develop and I can admit that now. I always asked my parents and others with kids when babies would start crawling and when they would walk. I expected Mason to be on some sort of schedule to complete each milestone, which was just simply naive of me.

I wanted to see Mason start crawling at the same pace as a friend’s baby who is a month older than Mason, their baby boy was crawling at 6 months and walking at about 10 months. Mason is taking his sweet time and after seeing them chasing their son around I’m grateful that Mason is taking his time.

Mason started crawling, actually more of an army crawl or drag, at about 10 months. Ever since that first crawling day we have watched him slowly start pulling himself and walk along the couch or with us holding him up but has no desire to walk on his own.

Just a few weeks ago, he started crawling on his hands and knees, and now our floors aren’t as clean as they were when he army crawled, his clothes are cleaner though.

Until now, I would have been concerned about how slowly he his getting to the walking but everyone is different. This is where I am going to offer some advice from a dad of just 13 months -- don’t set goals about when you baby should do things like crawling and walking, it will just cause stress.

I use the word stress loosely because it isn’t that big of a deal, I can see progress in Mason. His progress wasn’t and still isn’t on track like other babies I know. I look back at people telling me not to worry about when he does things because he will do it at his own pace and completely agree. I’m sure once he starts walking I‘m going to wish he still was just a crawler.

For a little fun I included in the upper left two my favorite pictures of Mason to date. The one with the dog was taken with a cell phone in low light so its not of the highest quality but when the dog, Dottie, and your son are both standing you have to snap a picture. The second picture is Mason pigging out on his first birthday cake.