My boy

My boy is big.

Well, actually, he’s "our" boy, but I’ll take a little poetic license for the purpose of this column and refer to him this week as "my" boy.

As I was saying, he’s big.

I know this, because on Friday, when we suspected he had an ear infection, I took him to his pediatrician’s office, and they always weigh him as soon as we walk in.

He’s 28 pounds, which is pretty chunky for a little guy who is just 15 months old.

Normally, when people ask how old he is, I won’t be so specific.

I’ll say, "He’s one," mainly because when I was a childless bachelor, I can remember being mildly perturbed by people who would say their child was 37 weeks old, or 81 weeks old, and there I was looking dumb trying to do the math in my head.

So for a young fellow, he’s got a good appetite.

Even when he’s sick, like he was last week, he never missed a meal. Meals would actually put a smile on his face on those days when he was feeling a little under the weather.

Although I had heard his doctor talk about his "advanced" rate of growth, it never really sank in until this past Sunday when I got to meet a young man that was just one day younger than my boy.

My boy was considerably more "massive" than his new friend.

I kept glancing back and forth between the two young lads, noticing the difference in size between them.

As for me, I was always shorter and smaller than kids my age.

What made this worse was that they made me skip the first grade, because of some test scores. I went straight from kindergarten to second grade and as a result, I was generally about a foot shorter than the other boys in my class. This made "life on the playground" and later on "life on the football team" a bit of a challenge.

My boy is amazingly strong for his age.

I am reminded of his superhuman strength whenever it’s time to change his diaper and he decides he wants to go do something else. It takes pretty much all my strength to pin him down long enough to get the diaper secured in place.

How did they do that in the old days with those big safety pins?

People must have had three arms back then.

He’s very smart and very alert.

His senses are fine-tuned to the sound of a door opening to a room, especially a room to which he is not allowed access. Upon hearing the turning of the doorknob, especially the one leading to the bathroom, he will bolt for a chance to do a little "toilet fishing."

He really knows how to get under the old man’s skin, sometimes, though.

His favorite game is "turn off the TV."

I’ll be watching television, enjoying a little leisure time, and Andy will take note of this and immediately march to the big round button on the TV and turn it off.

I’ll usually yell and him at this point, and he will double-time it to another area with a silly little grin on his face.

It’s been a constant struggle to stay one step ahead of him on this front.

I folded a piece of cardboard, wedged it under the TV and then taped it over the buttons on the front to block his access.

Eventually, I cut a little hole in the cardboard – just large enough to let the remote control beams through.

Aha! You may be smart, but the old man’s got some tricks up his sleeve!

His second favorite game is, "open and close the DVD player as fast as you can."

It took quite a while, but I finally figured out a way to block his access to this device, while still allowing access to older family members.

It’s not always a power struggle.

Last night when I got home he smiled and ran to me so I could pick him up and give him a big hug.

When I put him down, he cried.

My big boy has a very special place in my heart, right beside his big sister, although I suspect one day, his "big" sister will be physically "littler" than him.

Big or little, it doesn’t really matter to me, he’s my boy and I’m really very proud of him.