Giant steps

Guard your Christmas trees! Samson James is walking. Now don't get too excited. He's not strolling around the house or taking leisurely turns around the coffee table yet. But he's taking eight or 10 consecutive steps and relying less and less on finding things to hold on to. And while he looks sort of like an unfrozen caveman, he's our little unfrozen caveman, so it's just fine.

We had his 15-month checkup yesterday, and slim Sam is finally 20 lbs. I was starting to wonder if we'd be packing him off to college in his carseat, facing backwards.

He also, and we found this out before the checkup, is apparently one of those kids who gets nosebleeds. I went in to get him from his crib yesterday morning, to find my smiling son with a Hitler mustache of crusted, dried blood and spots of dried blood on his crib sheets and lovey lamb.

Needless to say, this was not the greatest way to start the morning. Vicki and I remained calm, reasoning that it was probably owing to his headcold and the fact that we hadn't run the vaporizer in his room the night before. He seemed completely unfazed about having one of the four humours all over his face. And indeed, the pediatrician noted that one of his children has a similar thing happen when he's got a bad headcold.

Even so, he might as well have had Helter Skelter written on the walls for the way it made my heart leap into my throat.

When we first found out that Vicki was pregnant, I can remember the doctor showing us on the ultrasound the tiny little blinking light that was Sam's heart. Vicki saw it, and the doctor wanted to make sure I saw it too, but I couldn't seem to find it and told the doctor it was ok and that I believed him.

He turned to me, with all seriousness, and said "Look again. That little heartbeat is going to keep you up nights for the rest of your life."

A good doctor and wise man.