Thoughts on Parenting

Logan's not crawling yet, but he's sure trying hard!

Today I took Logan in for his 6-month checkup. He's doing great, coming in at 14 lb 4 oz, 26" long, and his head is in the 25th percentile (very small for our family--we're usually in the 90s!). He had gone from 25th to 5th % for weight, which is the norm for my kids. As long as he's a good eater, the pediatrician says it is just a sign of how active he is. I couldn't help but compare both my attitude and the doctor's to my experience with Liam as a baby. He also dropped in his growth curve significantly over the first year, but by the time he was 1 yr old the (different) doctor had him on a high-fat, high-calorie diet, he was going in for weight checks every week, and they were running all sorts of blood tests to see what was wrong. They didn't turn up anything. Eventually, Brandon's mom found his baby records, which turned out to be almost identical to Liam's. Now we know that "travel-size kids" just run in our family. I love being a mom for the 5th time around instead of the 1st!

Our high school marching band at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade last year

But at the same time, I'm still hitting all the firsts with Liam. This week he had the opportunity to sign up for 5th grade band as an after-school program. He wasn't interested at all, even after our fabulous high school marching band came and played for their school and he thought it was very cool. I would love to provide him with the chance to belong to a group like that. I think his reticence is mainly because he doesn't like the unknown, but how far do I push him? He did sign up for chorus instead, which is also great. And, of course, he's taking piano from a fabulous teacher (hee hee), in Cub Scouts, and playing soccer. Maybe Andrew will want to be in band in a few years...(oh no, am I just trying to live through my children?!).

And my last thought for today: 2-yr olds will be 2-yr olds, especially when all their entertaining brothers are away at school. I heard, "See my rainbow!" several times before I went to see it, and it was a beautiful pink one, indeed.

Luckily it washed off without any problems, and he got to draw circles on paper afterwards.