Patty, Steve and I attended Katherine’s 9.75 month checkup today. Best way to describe her…. tall, skinny girl with a big head. ๐ She measured 28″ long (75%), 18.3 lbs (25-50%) and 45 cm head circumference (75-90%).
Katherine showed Dr. Claudson and her nurse that she is indeed a very active girl. She sat up on the scale when the nice nurse weighed her. She also spent much of her checkup in her diaper crawling around the floor and having us walk her around the room.
Perhaps the hardest part of the checkup was her polio booster and her hematocrit test. I held Katherine in the lab chair while the shot nurse swabbed her big toe and pricked it with one of those mini razor things. Katherine howled as the nurse squeezed her toe to get the blood out (iron is a little low, but still acceptable). The icing on the cake was when the nurse then took out the big needle and quickly gave her a shot in the thigh. Even with the baby Tylenol we gave her beforehand, Katherine was very unhappy. We took her home and she took her afternoon nap.
Katherine’s Falling Adventures
As Dr. Claudson said, the biggest development from 9-12 months is increased mobility. He likened babies to a Space Needle that isn’t attached to the ground. Katherine’s been falling over a lot lately. Last Thursday, she fell into her toy bookcase and got a quarter sized bruise on her left check. The following Saturday, Katherine squirmed off her changing table (despite the fact that I had a hand on her), did a half spin and ended up in her dresser drawer before I could catch her. Then….the next day…I helped Katherine stand up and hold on a kitchen chair with both hands. I turned around to get a spoon and as I walked back, she let go with one hand, fell on the kitchen carpet and bonked her cheek on the table leg in the process. By the time Sunday afternoon came around, she had a bruise and a weal on one cheek and has been looking a little worse for the wear this week. We’ve had to keep a very close eye on her and stay close just in case she tries to stand up and loses her balance again.
Finger Food Rules
Katherine is expressing a strong preference for finger food. She would rather eat little chunks of cheese, bread, fruit instead of eating her lentils, vegetables or yogurt. Feeding her can be a bit of struggle, because she will just sit in her high chair and scream if she doesn’t like what she’s eating. We’ve tried not to give in and keep giving her different foods when she screams. But, its very hard on the ears to listen to her protestations.
She’s also eating at least 2 cubes of food at a sitting plus finger food. Yesterday for dinner she ate two cubes of lentils, a third of a container of baby yogurt, little bits of cheddar cheese, toasted whole wheat bread crusts and baked potato. She would have eaten more potato, but we figured that she had eaten quite enough for one meal!
Mom’s View from Behind the Chariot
I spent the bike trip last Saturday behind Katherine and Steve. Katherine was a total trooper and didn’t complain until 7 or so miles down the Burke Gilman trail. Steve claims that Katherine doesn’t like to travel at “high speeds.” Whenever he went faster than 15 mph, she would complain (imagine a whahhhaaa sound coming from the chariot). Also, the helmet still needs a bit more adjustment. By the time we finished the ride, she was slumped in her Chariot with the bike helmet over one eye. She was looking around with her other eye and sucking her thumb. We’ll likely try this again this weekend, hopefully with better results.
All in all, it was a successful trip though. Our friend James was in town visiting, and helped us get our bikes back into serviceable shape. This involved changing a lot of inner tubes, dusting off two years of dirt, etc. I had forgotten how much fun it is to cruise around on our road bikes, even if it was on a flat trail. ๐
