This weekend dear friends (dear since they took both of ours plus two of theirs for several hours and still said no to drugs) took our kids to a great city event. They volunteered for this to help out UberGeek and I, since we would be getting ready for the kiddos fifth birthday party. Several hours later all the kids returned home exhausted, spent and with a bounty of free loot that included a little paper from one of the local medical centers. The paper had their current height and weight written on it. I thanked my friend profusely, tucked the kids in for a nap and put the papers in the drawer for a later date. Then UberGeek and I frantically continued our birthday party preparations.
Later, after the party was over, all was cleaned up and a sigh of relief was breathed, I dragged out the little papers. I was curious as to how tall the kiddos were and those growth percentile calculators are readily available online.
Diva used to be a cute chubby baby, well, not so much chubby as fat. UberGeek and I fought over who had to carry her, "No, I'm not carrying Jaba, you carry her, I'm taking the skinny one in the carrier." Even her feet were fat, I couldn't fit them in any normal shoes, I had to purchase extra wide baby shoes for the fat pads that crept over the top. She was a soft, squishy, huggy, happy baby. Then she started walking and it was all over, it became obvious that UberGeek's metabolism genetics had blessedly been passed down to her. Within six months or so my child became thin. Now, at five, she is a little taller than average, just over the 79th percentile but only in the 2nd percentile for weight. So 98 percent of kids her age are heavier than she is. Thank goodness Osh Kosh and Children's Place make slim pants with adjustable waists.
Eddie Haskell has always been skinny. At birth he was just under six pounds, stark white and bruised after having been kicked by his twin sister mercilessly in utero. He was long and lean, already tall as a baby. With most babies people comment on how beautiful they are, my mom took one look at him and said "Poor little thing, he just looks like a turtle out of his shell." It was true, wrinkled and wise, with a furrowed brow he looked up at us as if to say, "Really, could you put me back in for just a couple more weeks? It was my sister who was ready to be born." He has been around the fifth percentile for weight since birth.
Once he scaled the heights of the 25th percentile before he started walking, and when I began supplementing breast milk with formula. As soon as he was mobile it was back to the fifth percentile. He is warm to the touch most of the time, a little metabolic oven in action, all sharp knees and elbows akimbo. Eddie looks just like childhood photos of UberGeek, so much so that it tugs on my heart, I wonder if it touches his mother as much as it does me to see how alike they are. Probably it is more so, since she has all those little boy memories; I only have pictures. I checked his percentiles and he is predictably in the 7th percentile for weight and the 97th for height.
I used to worry about my kids, afraid that I would take them in for one of those regular check ups and the pediatrician would give me the evil eye. Instead she asks me if they eat (they do), then she asks me what kinds of foods they eat (all kinds unless in a picky phase) and general questions about their diet and habits. Then she looks at their history and pronounces them sound and healthy. UberGeek never worries, he just gives me a look, "All those growth charts are skewed now by all the obese kids. Our kids are fine. We just have skinny kids, at least they don't eat candy." Subject closed.
