Our Son, Beowulf Dalton

When I was pregnant with Jack, Josh and I would pray often for the baby to grow "strong and healthy."  It seemed the right thing to say at the time.  I remember, however, musing on the phrase one night, and saying to Josh: "Wouldn't it be funny if God took our prayers literally and Jack turned out to be an incredibly strong child?  I mean, for months we've been praying specifically for him to be strong.  What if he ends up like Hercules or something?"  We chuckled at the thought and commenced eating dinner.

I should have known when he was still in utero that he was no weakling.  I may have mentioned before that whenever I was reading with a book against my belly he would kick savagely at the binding of the book with enough force to make it bounce. But now that Jack is nearly a year old, I am convinced that our prayers were, indeed, answered literally.  Throughout the past 11 months, Jack has manifested astonishing physical strength.  On his second day of life he did a push-up off my chest while the lactation consultant was there to witness it.  Her brow furrowed slightly.

"Huh," she puzzled, "I've never seen a newborn do that before."

His power grew as his little body did.  He went through a phase when he was around 6 months old of thigh-clenching.  He would do this every time I tried to change his diaper--clench his legs together so tightly that I had to use both hands to force them apart, grunting and sweating, sometimes hollering to Josh for back-up, just so I could get the diaper up.  All the while Jack would stare innocently and curiously at me, seemingly unaware of the feat of strength that his lower body was performing.

He Army crawled at 6 months, muscling his way around the house.  Shortly thereafter, around 7 months, he began pulling himself up on things, and from there he graduated to full-scale body hangs off the edges of chairs, table ledges, etc.  He went through a Thor's Hammer Chop phase as well, where he would swing his arms violently and forcefully when either happy or irritated, bringing his hands crashing down upon whatever poor frail creature happened to be within reach (usually me).  Our friends, Brett and Lindsey Walker, watched him the night of my sister's wedding, and got to be first-hand witnesses to the strength of both his lungs and mighty fist.  Brett attempted to give him a bottle and Jack straight-up knocked it out of his hands.  "Freakishly strong," was the descriptor Brett applied to our little cherub.

I quail at the power of his terrible hand.  Look out, modern day Grendels.  When he was first learning to walk we would go around outside together, and I often felt like he was going to break my finger off--it would turn purple, and his hand was white from clenching.  Thankfully he now struts around by himself like he's conquered the world, so I don't need to have my blood vessels cut off and finger bones crushed every time we go for a stroll.

Sometimes I think he's just showing off when he walks around carrying both of my 2.5lb hand weights, one in each hand.  That's basically a quarter of his body weight.  At this point these antics have convinced us he is bound for a career in freight (or dentistry, for that matter, as he is also obsessed with teeth and toothbrushes.  Nothing makes him laugh harder than when I bare my front teeth to him).  His new move is to horse-kick during diaper changes, lashing out with both legs.  Not conducive to easy clean-up.

We usually come on the short end of Jack's stick of thumping, swatting, slapping, clawing, and clenching.  But sometimes in the quiet middle-of-the-night nursings he will reach up very gently to touch my chin or nose or cheek, and his little chubby fingers are soft and sweet.  Occasionally these tender moments end in a fishhook to my nostril or a swipe at my lip, but such are the risks in mothering a wild little Hercules such as ours.