The Peanut and the Pork Chop

You'd think that I was talking about my newborn as the peanut and my toddler as the pork chop, but no--Allison Clare's two-year pediatrician's appointment was today, and it turns out that she is just a little bit of a thing. She weighs 24 lbs and is 31 inches tall, which puts her between the 5-10th percentiles for weight and at the 5th percentile for height. Socially and verbally, she is doing well--she greeted the doctor with a polite, "Hi, Dr. Y__," after having practiced all morning because she was excited to be going to the doctor (she has a book with a doctor in it). Our pediatrician is really wonderful with kids, averting a few fearful tears by getting AC interested in her stethoscope. She said AC's temper tantrums (and breathtaking lack of awareness of her parents' authority) sound pretty normal, and she wasn't worried about AC's size since she's always been pretty tiny.

Gillian, on the other hand, is plumping up as if someone were inflating her. She'd only lost about an ounce of her birth weight in the first three days (compared to Allison Clare's having lost full pound in the first three days), and she then packed on 9 more ounces in the next week. Her cheeks are so chubby now that when she tips her head from one side to the other, they almost swing a little, like jowls. I don't know how much she weighs because she doesn't go back to the pediatrician until her two-month appointment, but I do know that the tabs of her diapers used to almost cross over each other in the middle, and now barely reach around her waist, even when they are fastened below her big round tummy. It's really reassuring to see her like this, especially after we had watched newborn AC practically shrivel before our eyes, and yet I'm a little crestfallen too, that my teeny girl is already getting so big, holding up her head, looking around at the world like she belongs in it now and is beginning to recognize it as home.