Eerily, the pitter patter of little feet wandering unassisted through our home has not yet developed. Instead, Reid has apparently decided to hold out on us, after his walking debut Friday.

Perhaps he was jarred by our knee-jerk decision to immediately dispatch to a mall and purchase baby shoes. Within twenty hours of his first steps, terribly cute shoes were strapped to his little feet, forcing him to uncurl his toes (which, it turns out, are curled much of the time). He dragged the pair of clodhoppers across the floor of the Stride Rite store, and looked up at us beseechingly, "Why would you put these...these...things on my feet?"

Perhaps he is confused by the sudden changes in his environment that were precipitated by his first two-footed adventure. The "side-tables of death," two sharp-edged boxes we use as a replacement for coffee tables, have disappeared (leading to hilarious conversations between Katrena and I as we sit stiffly on the couch, balancing our meals, beverages, the baby monitor, the remote control and the phone in our hands and on our legs like sideshow freaks). Gates have been erected around the "room of death," the office with our bookshelfs (baby ladders of death), CD towers (ibid), and countless chaotic brambles of electrical cabling too multi-directional to possibly understand. These gates have led to confusion for Reid (who, admittedly, doesn't have a ton of retention memory) and our dog, Dixie, who, having endured neglect since the dawn of Reid, now has physical obstacles to deal with as well.

Or maybe Reid is refusing to walk more until he locks in a five-year deal with a signing bonus. Maybe we were just getting a taste, so we would lock him in with a contract that would set a new standard for the industry.

I sure hope not. All that baby-proofing stuff cleaned us out.