In terms of abilities and personality, a baby
enters the world as a bag of reflexes, and it seems, not much more. But it does not take long at all before the
child’s interface with the world around begins to produce amazing results. A personality emerges, and skills begin to
develop. Within days of birth, an infant
is making rudimentary attempts at communication with his or her parents. Shortly thereafter, the child gains the
ability to focus and begins to learn the art of reading others’ minds by
watching their faces. Motor skills soon
follow, the ability to grip objects, the ability to roll over, strength to hold
up one’s head.
Each day brings with it exciting developments
in the child’s progress, and when I was a young father, I took a keen interest
in each stage of my son’s growth as a person.
What a wonder he was to me! What
a magnificent thing God crafted when he designed Caleb! A new aspect of God’s creation, which he had
planned since before the world began, was taking shape right before my
eyes. What a high privilege to have been
selected to play the role of father to this amazing new masterpiece of our
Creator!
Those first days were amazing, but the
realization of just how fun fatherhood would be began when Caleb learned to
crawl. Crawling vastly opens a child’s
horizons, and with this skill comes the ability to have the first of what can
be termed adventures. Adventures are
where daddies excel!
So it was that as I was getting ready for
work one morning shortly after Caleb started crawling, I detected a sound from
the doorway of the bedroom and glanced over to see my son, on unsteady arms and
legs, laboriously making his way into the room.
Being in the early days of crawling skill development, he frequently
collapsed under the burden of his own weight, and often this resulted in him
rolling all the way over onto his back.
No matter; he would struggle back to the crawl position and onward he
would come.
I do not now recall for certain, but I
suppose that on this particular morning, I was talking to him as he
progressed. His mother and I generally
heaped praise on him when he accomplished new skills, and making the difficult
pilgrimage from one room to another was definitely cutting edge stuff for him
at that age. What I do recall was that I
had laid out the socks I intended to wear for the day and that at some point I
turned my back on my son and the socks.
When I turned back around, I discovered that Caleb had taken one of my
socks and just as arduously as he had come, he was exiting the room, sock in
tow behind his little balled up fist!
“Hey!” I cried out teasingly. “You’re stealing my sock!” I chased him down and scooped him up, kissing
his neck and teasing him about being a little sock thief. He squealed with delight. I took my sock and went to work, thinking
that the fun was all played out.
