9 Month Check-Up (mini rant alert!)

I took Ben for his 9 month check up yesterday, and history is definitely repeating itself. I put him on the scale, and he weighed 16 lbs 15 oz. So I took him back to the room, just had his diaper back on him, when they said they wanted to weigh him again. Here we go, I thought. But again, he was 16-15. Turns out his weight is only in the 5th percentile. If you look back to about March of 2006, you'll probably see the same exact post about Josh. Apparently we just make lean little boys. So he goes back in a month for a weight check to make sure he's still gaining weight. We are not at all worried, because if you've seen this kid, you can tell how healthy he is. He totally doesn't look as thin as he apparently is. He's a chunky baby as our kids go! But the NP (who I LOVE!) just told me to try to get him a little more calories during the day, but thankfully didn't try to push me to give him any formula (after 3 years of treating my kids, I think she knows me better than that). In other check up news, he measured 28.5 inches, and has hit every milestone that he should have for his age, so we're cruising right along.

This is the time where I get a little annoyed with the growth charts. I know that they are important to gauge how a child is developing, but it seems like it turns into an obsession about where our children fall on a graph. Why do we need to put them in this little box? God, our perfect creator, saw it fit to make each person different, and so all kids are not going to grow at the same rate. Both of my kids cruised along at the 25-50% in weight, right up until their 9 month appointment, where they both dropped to the 5th percentile. Newsflash! When a baby starts moving around everywhere, they burn more calories and therefore are not going to put on weight as they did in their earlier non-mobile days. It's funny to me. With all of this talk about the childhood obesity epidemic, you would think that there wouldn't be so much focus on getting a child to gain weight, especially when they are clearly healthy healthy kids! I also believe that the growth charts are set by formula fed babies (of which Ben has never had a drop), which tend to be heavier than breast fed babies. All in all, I will give him the extra calories he needs so that they won't have to subject him to blood work and all that garbage if he doesn't weight what they think he should at his weight check next month.

Now that I've ranted, I just want to say that we feel so blessed to have such a happy, HEALTHY little baby boy in our lives. He is just awesome! What a perfect way to complete our family. We love you, buddy... just the way you are!

Open Shut Them

Joshua is the master of memorization. He can remember songs better than anything. Every once in a while he'll bust out with a song that we didn't even know that he knew. Tonight during his bath, which is like musical hour in our house, he all of a sudden started singing two songs I had no idea that he knew. "Where is Thumbkin" and "Open Shut Them". Thanks, Miss Michelle, for teaching him some of the old classics that we had forgotten about!

Some of our other bath time favorites are "C is for Cookie", "Rubber Duckie" and "Grandpa's Farm". I guess it's time to start memorizing bible verses!

I'm Gonna Get You!

Ben has been mobile for a while now, scooting himself to wherever he had enough motivation to scoot. Tonight I realized just how mobile he is. I couldn't get away from the kid! Everywhere I went, there he was. If I was doing puzzles with Joshua, there he was. If we moved over to the couch (all the way across the room), there he'd be. Over by the fireplace? Oh, there he is too. It was cracking me up. I felt like he was chasing me all over the house! So we made a game out of it. I don't think there was an inch of the living room that didn't see his tummy!

We've noticed over the last week or so that he has been working really hard on getting up on his knees, and in the last few days we've caught him up on his knees and rocking, like he was trying to figure out how to make all of the parts work together to crawl, so I'm sure it will just be a matter of time until he really is everywhere. In the meantime, this scooting maneuver he's got is pretty efficient. He even decided to go exploring in the kitchen over the weekend, scooting from one doorway all the way to another (from the play area to the pantry for those that are familiar with our house). He's starting to realize that he can go check things out. Glad we're already baby proofed!

Ben has also discovered how much he loves to stand, so whenever he is next to me, he pulls himself up. He's not quite to the point of pulling himself up on the furniture since he hasn't yet mastered getting himself into a sitting position from his tummy (that first time seems to have been a fluke), but he can pull himself up on Mommy like a champ.

He goes for his 9 month check up tomorrow, so I'll post again with all the stats!