Well-child visit update

Little Dude and I had a date with the doctor yesterday, as we did his 12-month check-up. (Yes, his first birthday was close to a month ago, but his doctor has been booked solid, due to one of the physicians leaving her practice.)

At 13 months, Little Dude weighs 22 lbs, 9 oz., and is 31.25″ long. For weight, he is just under the 50th percentile. For height, he is close to the 95th percentile.

His height has stayed pretty consistent since day one – varying from the 90th to the 95th percentile. His weight was in the 95th percentile in the beginning, and has been slowly decreasing. From what I’ve read, apparently that is very normal for babies who were breastfed, as the growth charts were built on formula-fed babies, and they have discovered that the rate of growth between formula versus breastmilk is quite a bit different.

The doctor and I discussed Little Dude’s food issues – how he loves one food, then suddenly, won’t touch it, and how he seems to have an issue with textures lately and we’ve had to go back to a lot of pureed veggies and fruits, as he spits out small pieces of them, although he LOVES chunks of meat. All normal, from the sounds of it, and she advised we just keep offering various choice of food to him. Also, due to the milk protein allergy, we are continuing soy formula until he is at least 18-months-old, to supplement the vitamins and fat he is not seeing from the wonderful dairy products most children are enjoying by this age.

I went ahead with the optional lead testing for Little Dude. Although we live in a new house, I’ve heard enough stories about kids that have have high levels of lead from the toys alone. Scary.

He wasn’t happy about the blood draw (or he shots he received, either), but he and I made it through all of the needles and I think he has even forgiven mommy (although he was only giving kisses to daddy this morning, hmm…).

After the doctor visit, we had to stop by my office. He had fun charming all of mommy’s coworkers, while I checked on a couple of projects. He even uttered something suspiciously sounding like, “what’s that?” at an appropriate moment, while we were there, which was hilarious. (My coworkers did confirm that Little Dude looks just like his daddy.)

On the way home (as we had the entire time in the car), we listened to Little Dude’s CDs, which really seemed to keep him happy and calm as he played quietly in his car seat.

Speaking of the car seat, we received the good news from our doctor, and flipped his car seats to forward-facing. This is wonderful, as he is currently riding with his little knees up in the air, due to lack of leg room when they were rear-facing.

Even though the standard rule appears to be 20 lbs and one-year-old for car seats facing forward, we had held off flipping them, as I had heard that if you can wait a bit longer, it is safer for your child, and that they may be upping the weight limit. Due to Little Dude’s length, I don’t know how much longer we could really have waited though, although I did want to talk to our doctor first.

Here’s a little glimpse of our “beach bum/surfer Little Dude,” from the other day…

Or, maybe he is our “ski bum.” After all, we have more snow and winter weather advisories on the way…

Yes, apparently the goodness knows how many feet of snow we have seen, have not been enough. I know we haven’t had much snow in the past few years, but I think we’re a bit overboard this year…

If you want to visit us, bring your snowshoes or cross-country skis!