Alexander's well-child check

Briefly—before I blog about Miriam's birthday—I have to write a little bit more about our wee birthday boy this month. 

I took him in for his well-child check and he's doing well. He's just tiny. 

Here he is next to a skeleton in the book Bones: Skeletons and How They Work by Steve Jenkins. Many of the bones in the book say they are "actual" size, so Alexander was curious about how "actually-sized" this skeleton was.

He's wearing his favourite pyjama pants (that have a huge hole in the knee). You can see he's getting a little tall for them, yes? Well, Andrew tried to guess what size they were. 

"What size are those?" he asked. "3T?"

I grabbed Alexander's pants to check the size and shook my head no.

"2T?"

I shook my head again.

"18 months?!?!"

Yes, friends. Alexander is comfortably wearing 18 month pants. He's a tall and slender dude—in the 1st percentile for BMI. The doctor asked us to try to increase healthy fats in his diet and after listing a few examples (such as avocado) Alexander declared, "We just had avocado last night!"

And indeed we had—homemade tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches and slices of avocado.

At least the doctor admitted that being tall and slender might just be in his genes, so we didn't have to try too hard to make him gain weight. But...just add a little more fat in where we can. Honestly, to quote my mom's cousin Nola's cry of disgust when another cousin accidentally grabbed a fat-free box of something from the grocery store shelf: "Put those back! We don't do fat-free in this family!"

Anyway...Alexander is 34.4 lbs (42.5 inches tall), which is almost comical considering he was 21 lbs. at his one-year check up. 

Rachel was 41 lbs.
Zoë was 37 lbs 6.5 oz.

I can't find the other kids' weights at the moment so I'll have to hunt them down later. 

It's just interesting that he was my biggest baby at age one (aside, probably, from Phoebe, who I'm pretty sure will out-weigh him at her well-check next month) and is very likely my smallest child at age five (perhaps even smaller than Benjamin). Growth patterns are weird, that's all.

Here's 21 lbs. of Phoebe in her happy spot lately. My back is killing me. I may as well carry Alexander around all day and he's five.