Jamie the Giant

Got a bit of a shock today.

Although just two months old, our son is already showing signs that he'll be tall.

This is not a surprise in itself given I'm 6' 2" and a bit myself (the bit is very important to me).

But, having done some Internet research, it now appears Jamie's not just going to be tall; he is actually going to be the tallest man in history. I'd better explain.

After putting him on our bed in his jimmy-jammies last night, he decided to stretch himself out as above.

"Look at him, he's enormous," I yelped excitedly to Vanessa. "I've got to measure him," before shooting off to find the tape measure.

67 cms was what he came out as - or almost 2' 3" in old money which, you know, is pretty darn big (for two months).

Then I had an idea. I remember someone telling me at some point in the past that you could work out how tall your baby/child was going to be as an adult by using some sort of mathematical formula somewhere.

So, during an idle moment at work this afternoon, I had a quick look on Google to see what I could find. And sure enough, something turned up - "The Baby/Child Height Predictor."

"How tall will your baby be when he or she grows up?" it asked, clearly aware that I had no idea. "Will your child end up on the jockey-size side, tall as a NBA player or somewhere in between? Get an idea how the averages play out by entering some information here."

I quickly entered my height and Vanessa's height into a table followed by Jamie's height, weight and age before pressing the "calculate adult height" tab.

I waited excitedly for what seemed like a long time but was obviously only about two seconds.

And I swear this is what it said on the next page (I even printed it out to make sure I got it right).

"Based on the information you entered, your child's height will be approximately 15' 7" which is 4.75 metres. Remember - these numbers are based on averages, so don't come back in 20 years with a complaint."

This is indeed exciting news. For, having also checked this out, I can reveal that the tallest man in history was one Robert Pershing Wadlow from Alton, Illinois.

He was 8' 11" tall. Meanwhile, our Jamie is set to be almost twice that size.

I've always hoped that our son would be special but, you know, this just about tops everything.

A proud day for us all.