Octopus asked a really good question:

Will Alex age normally? (I condensed the question)

Here was the response I gave to them:

In the grand scheme of things, he'll age the same as a human, but different milestones will be hit at different times.

Some things will come sooner (crawling [walking on all fours], eating solid foods, anything pertaining to balance and coordination), some things will come slower (talking, walking [on two legs], almost anything relating to dexterity).

The younger he is, the greater the disparities will be, but things will start to even out as he ages.

xoxoxo

His eyes steadily opened and adjusted to the light filtering through the blankets. Something had woken him up. It wasn't a movement, or a noise, or even some new, interesting smell. He had the feeling that he had been very warm, hot almost, and now he wasn't as warm. He was still tucked up underneath the nice thick comforter: only his tail and nose were sticking out, just as he liked it. Daddy would try and tuck the blankets all around him, leaving his head exposed, but Alex would always wiggle free so he could get his head under the blankets and his tail out of them.

He stood up on shaky, still-sleeping legs and bucked the blankets off of his head. Daddy was in front of the closet, busy pulling on a new shirt. Once he'd gotten his head through the hole and fastened up a few buttons on it, he straightened the hem and walked over to the window. He pulled the shades open, flooding the room with blinding, early morning light; the bedroom was eastward facing, so the sun shone unfiltered, in a direct path, into the bedroom. Daddy squinted in the light, raising a hand to shield his eyes as they adjusted to the piercing rays. "Ugh, I hate snow."

Alex didn't understand what that meant. Most of what Alex heard made no sense to him. There were a few words that he was starting to understand, but they were mostly words that were important to him; foods (bottle, eggs, hot dog), events (bath, bed, movie) or people. "Daddy" of course was his favorite word. "Daddy" filled him with warm, fluffy feelings. Daddy meant two different people: the daddy that was currently stroking his head and ears as he put the bed back together around Alex, and the Other Daddy that was sometimes very big and very furry, and sometimes not so big and not so furry. Other Daddy was also called "David" sometimes, but Alex had not figured out the pattern behind the two different names. He was still very dependent on his sense of smell as his main indicator of the world around him and so hadn't realized that when Daddy was big and furry he was "Daddy;" when he was not so big and not so furry he was "David."

"Grandpa" meant the big - but not as big as Other Daddy - man that fed him grown-up foods like bacon and sausage, and smelled like the big shiny things that growled whenever they were awake. "Grandma" was the calm, quite woman that liked to just sit and hold him, or cradle him in her arms while she moved around the house. "Finn" was the almost-as-big-as-Other-Daddy guy that fed him lots of special treats whenever Daddy wasn't around: crunchy orange triangles, crunchy orange sticks, crunchy brown sticks, crunchy orange balls, crunchy yellow circles. Finn liked crunchy things and liked to share them with Alex; that made Finn wonderful in Alex's mind. All the other people he knew weren't around often enough for Alex to really care too much about; he just made sure to remember whether they were fun, scary, gentle or strange.

Daddy picked Alex up and held him over his shoulder. Alex wiggled as best as he could; he didn't want to be held! He wanted to run around and play. Daddy just held him more firmly. "Stop it, Alex, I don't want to drop you." Alex didn't know what his daddy was saying. Alex's head bounced up and down softly as Daddy walked down the stairs. Alex hadn't figured out how to go down the stairs on his own yet, but going up them was fine. And it was kind of fun to sit at the top of the stairs while everyone else was downstairs; he could see the tops of everyone's heads and pretend he was big like Other Daddy. When they got into the kitchen, Daddy put him on the cool, slippery floor. Grandma was already in the kitchen, a mug in her hand. She looked at Daddy and immediately started talking in those funny words that meant nothing to Alex. "Oh, Kurt, honey, you look like a zombie. Did you not sleep at all last night?"

Daddy poured himself his own mug of hot, black, yucky drink. Alex had stuck his nose in a cup of it once and burned his nose. Once the burning subsided he had licked the wetness off his face; it tasted horrible. "Alex hasn't been sleeping the past few nights. Last night, and the night before, I woke up to hear him barking on the baby monitor. This morning I woke up and heard him whimpering, so I went down to his room and he was quivering in his crib. He had an accident, but I think he had a nightmare first. He looked so pitiful: so tiny and wide-eyed. I washed him up a little before putting him in my own bed, but by the time I got him settled and asleep, cleaned up the mess in his crib, and then got back to bed, I couldn't sleep. I stared at my clock until about four."

Grandma put a hand on Daddy's shoulder. "Why don't you go back to bed, sweety? I can make Alex breakfast and take care of him. I don't have work until two."

Daddy looked at Alex, sitting on the floor, staring back up at him. "Thank you so much, Carol. The baby book says that protein and calcium are the most important things for him right now, so I usually make him an omelet of some kind and fix him a bottle." Alex's ears pricked up at the word 'bottle.' "He won't finish eating the omelet in one sitting, but if you leave it somewhere he can get it, it'll all be gone within an hour or two."

"Finn was the same way. He'd wail for food, eat a little of it, refuse anymore and then half an hour later he'd be wailing away again."

"Now he eats anything that isn't too fast to catch." They laughed in the same rhythmic, pulsing way the ceiling fan in Alex's nursery sounded, then Daddy left the kitchen.

Alex didn't know a whole lot of words, but he knew the word 'eat' and he had heard it several times. Food came from the kitchen, where they were right now, so he stayed with grandma, watching her expectantly, while Daddy went to the living room.

Grandma made breakfast wrong. Daddy usually gave him a bottle while the frying pan heated up, but Grandma was making the eggs, first. Alex whimpered at her. "It's ok, Lex, breakfast will be ready soon." Alex lowered his nose to the floor and started looking for his own breakfast. Sometimes he would be lucky; Grandpa and Finn were messy and dropped a lot of food. Sometimes, Alex could get to it before Grandma or Daddy noticed. He checked around the center island: nothing. He headed out to the dining room and checked under the table, around each chair, and even under the big plant: nothing. He had tried eating the plant before, but it had made him throw up, so Grandpa put it on a small, round table out of his reach. He decided to head back to the kitchen; maybe if he stared at the refrigerator long enough, Grandma would figure it out.

He was headed to the fridge (and towards Grandma; she was taking things out of the fridge) when he stopped suddenly next to the stove. Something was there. He looked between the counter and the stove. There was no space between the two for the most part, but down near the bottom it was like someone had cut out long rectangular sections from the base of the stove, allowing two or three inches between the stove and counter: just enough room for Alex to shove his snout. His night vision was pretty good and he could see a lot of things hidden in that little inaccessible crevice. There were dust bunnies, of course, but dust bunnies were not yummy and they made him sneeze when they stuck to his nose. There was also a grease slick going up the stove-side of the crevice and staining the floor. Grease was only yummy for a day or two. But there, just in front of the dust bunnies and sitting atop the grease stain on the faux-marble linoleum, sat a corner of toast. It was blackened and, quite likely, almost as old as Alex.

But it looked delicious.

Alex stuck his nose into the crevice; it smelled as good as it looked, if not better. He dug his claws into the floor, trying to push himself forward. His head was firmly wedged between the counter and the stove; it couldn't go in any further, but he wasn't worried about being able to wriggle free. Sticking his tongue out, he found he could just manage to poke the toast. When his tongue got tired, he retracted it, drooling at the thought of the toast just out of his reach. He poked his tongue back out, touching the nearest edge of the toast again. The viscosity of the drool on his tongue was just enough to cause the toast to move closer when he retracted his tongue again (of course, Alex knew nothing of viscosity, or science…except maybe a little cause and effect). Poking his tongue out one final time, he was able to tag the topside of the toast and drag it all the way back into his mouth. It was stale and hard – difficult to chew – but oh, so yummy. At some early point in its life, someone had buttered it and sprinkled it with garlic salt. Alex was still divided on his feelings about garlic, but salt was amazing. There was a little glass jar of it on the kitchen table he'd been able to get at once and he'd licked it for a good half hour before Finn has spotted him and had taken it away.

Just as he was swallowing the last crunchy bit of it, Grandma scooped him up around his midsection and pulled him away from the stove. "There's nothing back there for little wolf puppies. Come on, let's have some breakfast." He wasn't sure if he'd been 'caught' or not. Usually when he found food that wasn't handed to him, someone would try to take it away from him, sticking their fingers in his mouth while saying 'drop it'. That was his signal to swallow, before his precious treasure could be taken away. Grandma didn't seem to notice that he had found floor-food; either that, or she didn't care. Either was fine with Alex.

xoxoxo

Breakfast with grandma was good. She cooked the eggs longer than Daddy, making them firmer and less runny, but instead of those funny little red, green, and yellow cubes that Daddy put in the eggs, Alex was delighted to find gooey, dripping cheese.

After he and Grandma had eaten and she'd given him a bottle, she put the remainder of his plate on the floor for him, just like Daddy did, and then left him while she cleaned. After a while, Alex got bored watching her clean (the only 'fun' cleaning was sweeping; he liked chasing the broom and the bristles felt funny), so he finished his breakfast and decided to go look for Daddy. Daddy was in the living room, lying on the couch. Alex watched him from the floor and realized he was asleep. He climbed up and sat next to his daddy, just listening to his daddy breath.

Grandma stuck her head in the living room, "Oh, there you are. Stay. Staaayyyy." He didn't know what she was saying, but she was looking at him and talking to him so she obviously wanted his attention. When she turned around to go back into the kitchen, Alex jumped down off the couch and followed behind her. She pulled a large white bag out of garbage can (oh, how Alex wished he could somehow get inside with all the amazing smells) and opened up the back doors: first the heavy inside one that Alex couldn't see through, then the smooth, outside door that was clear. She left the inside door open, but the outside one closed on its own.

But, slowly.

Usually, when people brought Alex outside, they carried him in their arms and didn't put him down until he was in one of the big growly things or in his pen. But Other Daddy had allowed him to run around outside without his pen twice now, so maybe he was allowed to be outside without being held now? Every now and then what he was allowed to do and what he wasn't allowed to do changed. Maybe this was one of those changes?

Alex chased after Grandma and got through the second door just in time for it to miss catching his tail. Alex couldn't stand his tail; it got caught in a lot of things, wiggled when he didn't want it to and followed him everywhere. He wouldn't have minded too much if the door had taken it off. He watched Grandma as she walked across the covered porch, down the two steps and into the backyard, turning left to the side of the house where Alex could smell more garbage cans. Despite the nice smells coming from there, it was the rest of the backyard that he found fascinating.

Where once everything had been soft greens and browns, now everything was a harsh, bright white: smooth and flat. It looks like the bathroom, Alex thought. He followed after his Grandmother as far as the porch went, but once he got to the steps, he stepped off the right side of the steps, instead of the left. He dropped farther than he had expected, by an inch or so. If he were older, he'd equate the sensation with going up a flight of stairs, placing your foot down expecting another step, only to find you had already reached the landing; it was disorientating. The white ground was incredibly soft and cold and…wet? Alex looked around, his eyes going wide. The entire backyard was covered in ice cream! He remembered ice cream. Other Daddy had given him ice cream and that was one word he would never forget, like 'bacon,' or 'Daddy,' or 'Sheldonthesheep.'

He buried his nose in the cold wetness, getting water up his nostrils. Something was wrong. It wasn't sweet: just cold and wet. He let out a low, throaty rumble. It wasn't ice cream, just funny colored, soft ice cubes. Daddy would put ice cubes on the ground every now and then for him to play with; ice cubes were fun, but not yummy. This strange ice cube-like stuff covering the backyard could not be batted around and chased. How disappointing.

There was noise behind Alex. He looked over his shoulder just in time to see his Grandma walking up the steps, across the porch, and through the two doors. Alex chased after her, tripping up the steps, but by the time he got to the house, the inside door had shut in his face.