You know by now that Olivia is little. She is all of twenty-eight inches in length and a whopping 16.5 pounds as of her One Year Old Checkup. And that 16.5 pounds includes a saturated diaper that I hadn't changed since eighteen hours before to get her statistics at least "on the charts" in her file. I felt like that episode of Andy Griffith my father loved so much, the one in which Barney couldn't meet the weight requirements of a deputy. They ended up putting the whistle he wore around his neck on a ten-pound industrial chain and he just squeaked by.
The nurse told me that if she hadn't grown in length since the last visit, she'd be worried. But she still had a look of consternation as she left the room. However the doctor succeeded in allaying my fears where she'd failed, adroitly pointing out that with Eric's 5'8" and my 5'4" and 112 pounds, how big were we expecting her to be? My little ballerina.
He queried me on her eating habits and I had brought a hastily scribbled diary of her typical food schedule.
6:00 a.m.: seven ounces of formula
8:30 a.m.: bowl of oatmeal and jar of fruit, sometimes a scrambled egg with that, and if we go to Starbucks together, a croissant.
10:30 a.m.: second bottle, seven ounces
11:30 a.m.: lunch--meat and vegetable, fruit
1:30 p.m.: third bottle, seven ounces
2:30 p.m.: snack (fruit, cheerios)
5:00 p.m.: dinner--meat and vegetable
6:00 p.m.: final bottle, six ounces
The doctors eyebrows confirmed that I was, in fact, giving Olivia enough nutrition. I even omitted the snacks she enjoys throughout the day: just that morning I had fished out of her mouth some carpet, some stickers, a sunflower seed (shell intact), and a portion of Jake's list of classmates . The point is, Olivia eats. She eats, and then eats, and then craves a little more. And woe be the person who traipses by Olivia with their own sustenance. She wants yours, too.
She'll get bigger, inevitably. And we all live in our house quite accustomed to her appetite. As Jake said the other day--without looking up from his homework--as I searched and called for Simon: "Olivia ate him."
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3 comments:
Jake has a place in comedy for sure, but where I wonder? Why do we always, I mean always worry about our kids? I mean is it just our generation or what? My mom is currently visiting and I can see her secretly grinning as I am rushing around picking my kids up from school, getting them to their sport activities, helping with homework, etc. I am sure she is thinking when you were that age, I just opened the front door and you and your brother were gone until dinner.
Olivia's definitely related to me. All the evidence, all of it, points to the genetic code. Bless her little heart. She'll live long, too.
OK...I'll do this AGAIN since Laura claims that she didn't receive my comment to approve...and I won't even go into the censorship issue.
My point is that Laura somehow managed to include a reference to her diminutive weight in her blog. (And by the way, that is underweight if you want to be a runway model in Spain, so there! Of course she would also have to grow about 9 inches.) Now meanwhile, I recently lost 30 pounds on the clinical depression diet (but that's an issue for another blog)and am walking around feeling like a supermodel at 135. And if I ate croissants like Olivia, I would probably have to shop in the plus sizes (I'm already too big for Abercrombie & Fitch at an Old Navy size 8).
So trust me, Olivia is not undernourished...if we're going to worry about that, let's talk about Nicole Richie or one of those Olsen twins. Olivia is blessed with a good metabolism and a one-handed peek-a-boo that leaves all the other 13 month olds in the dust!
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