Our Little Peanut

The kids had their one year checkup on Tuesday. Rosemary weighed in at 16 pounds, 3.5 ounces. She is still not on the growth chart for her actual age (not adjusted for prematurity) despite our efforts to fatten her up. She is getting closer, but the bottom line on the chart in the pediatrician's file still eludes her.

She is proportionally small, in that she is a short as she is light. She is just small all over. She only grew out of her size 0 newborn sandals last month.

She is Thing 3 on the left:



And the flying Thing 3, who looks like she is crying, but is really laughing (I think):


She is a perfect little package, but I still get frustrated when her dot doesn't make it on that stupid curve. After every weigh in, we do our own chart at medcalc, and every time I obsess about it - looking at the prior charts and seeing if she has moved up or down a fraction of a notch around the fifth percentile for her adjusted age.

Then, after the appropriate amount of obsessing and stressing about why she is not yet huge, I remember to look at my wedding band on my finger and think of this:


I took this picture of Rosemary when she was 21 days old - as soon as her little arms looked big and sturdy enough for me to slip my well scrubbed wedding band over her hand. If I wasn't scared I would snap her arm, I think I could have gotten it all the way up to her shoulder.

When I put the location of her dot on the chart in perspective with the ring on my finger, I stop obsessing and I'm just appreciative that we have a healthy, happy, beautiful (according to me) one year old girl, who has come a long long way.