As I tend to do around my baby’s birthdays, especially the first, this week of Truman turning one has been a reflective time. It was also incredibly full (you can substitute that word for any synonym of nuts if you’d like a more accurate description) with one of the agenda items being, not surprisingly, Trumy’s well baby appointment on Wednesday.

Side note: I left my house, went to the doctor’s office with two kids in tow, and returned to my house in less than 60 minutes’ time. Let us have both a moment of silence and go do cartwheels in the yard in honor of this, shall we?!

For the most part, everything is incredibly well.

Truman is still my laid back little dude, my smiley little yoga baby with next to no hair except some super long and super blonde locks on top of his head, who is overall so very good that he still makes me question whether or not we are done. I may have gotten some raised eyebrows when mentioning that fact out loud recently, but it’s true. If I could have 10 more just like him (kidding – just one more would be cool) and I could for sure get the whole no-morning-sickness thing again, I’d be totally down. But now I’m rambling, because tonight we’re talking Trumy and we’re talking that itty bitty part from the appointment that has the potential to be not so itty bitty.

Even though Mr. T’s muscles, both in the legs and stomach, are strong, and he is finally up and legit crawling now (up until a couple weeks ago it was still just incredibly fast army crawling), his gross motor skills continue to lag. The bright side of this is that, naturally, his fine motor skills kick ass. So even though I am totally OK with him not walking yet and know that some kiddos take way beyond a year to do so, I am trying to keep my concern levels in check when it comes to his legs.

Mr. Littlest Man does not like to put weight on his legs. He hasn’t ever (liked to that is). He’s tried it a few times, in the ExerSaucer and when I hold him under the arm pits above the ground at what should be standing height, but instead he just yanks both knees up and gets his little feet right off the ground as quick as can be, always.You should have heard the screams when our doc tried to get him to stand and walk in the exam room. Not pretty and definitely not happy.

To be fair, our doctor is not freaking out yet and isn’t trying to make me freak out yet either. This is just something we’ve been tracking for some time now and in the next few months, well, that is where it feels like things begin to shift; from here, it feels like the pressure is on. Most likely, because the hips seems fine and the strength is there, the issue is a sensory thing. Truman probably doesn’t like the way things (carpet, hardwood, plastic, anything) feels on the soles of his feet. While this is not the end of the world, it is something we are going to have to overcome in order for him to start pulling up beyond just his knees and actually start standing/walking.

And as it goes with anything where one of your kiddos is behind or struggling, this is panic and nervous making for a mama. I just want him to be OK and to be able to do it. Not anytime soon if he doesn’t want to – I am cool with waiting – I just want to know that he’s going to be OK. Of course, in this situation, OK might have to come with some work, so I’ve been trying to do some research on sensory play, specifically for the feet, because while we still don’t know much about his eating preferences, it seems to be just these appendages showing caution right now. If us trying to touch his feet (which he doesn’t hate) and putting his feet on different textures (that one is more interesting) don’t work, well, then we have to move on to the next level of help.

For now, I am going to try to figure out how fancy footwork plays into our current day-to-day while I continue to enjoy my incredibly sweet, still nursing, mostly sleeping OK, can’t-believe-he-is-already-ONE Truman. Goodness, how I love him so.