Driving with a Booster Seat

When your last blog was really nice and emotional and heartwarming and then you have to write another one about…… something…. it sucks.

I was going to try to not even bother writing anything until after Loops for the Troops, but that didn’t seem like the answer either.

So, I will write about something totally silly and mostly meaningless to break it up a little.  If you want to read something good, you might want to just go back to this post.

But if your still with me here, lets talk about small.

Small can be a good or bad thing.  When you are trying to lose weight, smaller is the goal.  When it comes to diamonds, small doesn’t have quite the same appeal.  Small is relative.

Well, my 3 children are small.

Not small like young.  Small like “awe, he’s so cute, is he walking yet?” about your 3 year old.  Small like never hitting the bottom end of the 3rd percentile on the growth chart. 

When I had my first, he was born average size.  Now, by average size I mean actually average, not Dutch-community where I live average, where ladies have 11lb babies without a hitch.  I mean 7.5lb average.

But weeks went by and well, while he didn’t lose weight, he gained it very…..slowly.  After a couple of check-ups I was on daily weight monitoring with him,  We got sent to testing for Cystic Fibrosis and every other possible disorder that might cause stunted growth.  All turned out fine.

They had us feed him solid foods early, and mix in high-fat milks, creams and even butter into his cereal in an attempt to see if he would gain weight faster.  I was fairly certain I was going to have the only 6 month old in the history of the world who had high cholesterol.

Around this time I remember my mom calling while I am in tears, trying to basically force feed my son so the doctors won’t think he’s sick at his next appointment.  And I tearfully explain that he just isn’t interested in eating any more and why won’t he just eat more and why isn’t he getting bigger and why why why….wait…. is my mom LAUGHING?  Yup.  She is.  Because apparently, she may have prayed to see that day while she was doing the exact same thing with me.

Now, at this point I watch ONE episode of “World’s Littlest People” and become slightly convinced that my child may have Primordial Dwarfism.  So my Pediatrician sends my son for a bone scan.  How it works – they scan his hand with an x-ray and judge ‘bone age’.  From their they can see if your child has a big growth spurt coming or if there is a concern, for example if their ‘bone age’ in much younger or older than they are.  My son’s ‘bones’ were about 1-2 years older than him, whatever that means other than they assured me he would continue to grow, but at the same curve he is on now.  His ‘estimated’ adult height was placed at 5’2″.  It would not be inconceivable that they are wrong.  But that’s their best guess.

Thankfully we have a great Pediatrician who was reluctant to panic over a perfectly healthy child who just wasn’t the size everyone else said was ‘normal’.  He ran the tests to make sure we weren’t neglecting any possible medical problem, and the he let him be.

Bring on baby number 2.  Now she was born slightly premature and a little smaller than her brother, but once all that drama ended and we were home from the hospital, there was nothing medically that should have caused her growth to be slowed.  But, of course, it was.

So there were all the same tests.  And an early start to the baby food taught us she had a small problem – she was unable to gauge being ‘full’ and as such would eat baby food until she threw up.  But still gain no weight.  Which brought us to a fun new test to add to the others – the fat absorption test.  Basically, you write down everything you feed your child and you collect their poop in what is essentially a paint can for days until you bring it back to the lab to test and see if your child’s body is absorbing the fat they eat.

Again, our child was healthy.  And she definitely outgrew the eat-until-you-puke issue.

Bring on baby number 3.

At a visit around 3 months my Pediatrician charted his size again, below the 3rd percentile (for those without kids, that means less than 3 percent of kids are his size or smaller, the rest are bigger).  Then he looked at him and both the other kids in the room, threw up his hands and said

“You know what, they’re small.  Lets not do any tests unless a new problem comes up.  They’re.  Just.  Small.”

And ya.  They are.  I have a 24lb 3 year old who is officially my biggest for his age child. (No joke, I have a friend who’s child is only 1lb smaller and 6 months old).  I have a 32lb 5 1/2 year old and a 43lb almost 9 year old.  They have never seen the bottom of the “Average Growth Chart”.  They wear clothes several sizes smaller than their age.  They will be in Booster Seats in the car until they learn to drive.

O’well.

You know what having small children has taught me?  

Sometimes others don’t get it.  Like going to your oldest’s Kindergarden class and asking the teacher to make sure the other kids don’t carry him around.  Because some are big enough to do just that and 6 year old girls really like kids they can mother.  The teacher didn’t get it and thought I was crazy until a little girl his age walked up to him on the playground, picked him up, placed him on her hip and carted him off. 

Being small is really noticeable in a town with a whole lot of really tall Dutch people.  I mean, I am really short.  I never honestly thought much of that until I moved here.  Now I am reminded constantly because everyone around here is so much taller than me.  And my kids, they don’t look so small compared to some of the other children.  But since we have friends who’s kids are the exact opposite than ours size-wise, it tends to make it all the more noticeable.

Being small is easier for girls than boys.  Big shocker, hey?  But even as babies and toddlers people;s thoughts on size relate to gender.  While I got a lot of people asking me if my son was ‘okay’ when he was so small, most people just cooed and thought my daughter was ‘cute’.  This is only going to get harder for my boys as they get older.

“Good things come in small packages” was mildly irritating when people said it to me as a kid and I see the same expression that I would get on my kids faces when you tell them that.

I am a fan of doctors, specialists, medical advances and all of that.  Trust me, I am very grateful that I live somewhere where all that is available to us.  But sometimes, abnormal is not a ‘problem’, it’s just a fact.  Sometimes you have to look above the clipboard and notice that the kid’s 5 foot tall mom is standing there in front of you and realize maybe, they were just created to be this size.

No matter if it still fits, your 3 year old should probably stop wearing shirts with snaps at the top for the head.  And your 7 year old that wears a size 4 does not want to wear shirts with Mickey Mouse or Bob the Builder.  It’s not always easy to find both size AND age appropriate clothes.  BUT – it costs a lot less to dress my kids when it takes them years to outgrown anything.

Remember this post?  Picky eaters + really small kids = lots of stress and a little judgement on your parenting skills.

When your 18 month old is having a fit, other mom’s will give you a dirty look and maybe even come and give your crap when they think he’s only 6 months old and you left him face down on the floor screaming.  Uh, lady, he can get up and walk.

When your 2 year old still isn’t walking (different kid than above) you may have to consider that could be because he’s only 17lbs and carrying him comes way too easy.  Why walk when people are still willing to carry you everywhere?

If your kids have the opposite ‘problem’, that can be hard too.  I have friends who’s really tall kids have been red-flagged as ‘obese’ by nurses who are too busy looking at their age and weight to notice that they are tall and thin.  And other friends who probably get more than a little sick of people commenting how ‘big’ their little girl is.  It’s funny how quick we are to compare our kids (I am the biggest culprit) instead of just accepting they’re all different.

When you’re kids don’t fit the child-manual mold, people freak out.  I started to refuse to take my kid to any hospital with a doctor that didn’t know us when one trip to emergency for the stomach flu became hours and hours of tests and observation since they figured my child must have an underlying condition based on his size.  Every visit to the Health Unit results in the same ‘screening’ questions on my parenting skills and feeding patterns and change in the nurse’s attitude when they plot their size on the growth chart.  At one point, a Health Nurse almost tried to have my child diagnosed ‘failure to thrive’.  I had enough.

So much so that my pediatrician wrote up the following note on a prescription pad for me to take with me if they have to see another doctor or go to the hospital:

To whom it may concern,
The children listed above have been in my medical care since birth and need no further medical investigation due to their size.  Please call this office with any questions regarding their medical history.

That’s right.  My kids have a doctor’s note allowing them to be small.

And maybe one day they will have a crazy growth spurt.  But I am not going to promise them anything.  I’m still waiting for mine.

So, I ask, is there anything weird but okay about your kids?

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