growing pains

or maybe rather, I should say, ungrowing pains.

in the fall, when tae had her three year check up, her doctor was concerned about her height and weight. friday, we had our follow up visit. i actually saw the words written out on some of the lab work tae had done, “FAILURE TO THRIVE.”

um, ok. i think she’s thriving. she’s energetic, she’s learning, she’s active, she’s engaged with the world. she’s just not big. yesterday, she came in in the 7th percentile for height (35.5 in) and 1st percentile for weight (24.1 lbs). apparently, she’s not keeping up with the “charts” she’s even lower or all the charts than 3 months ago, especially on the body mass index scale.

mostly, i’m not worried. she’s a picky eater. she’s the same size i was at that age. i’m not a huge person. her dad is not a huge person.

but, to be safe, she had tons and tons of blood taken, and ever since then she’s been on edge. she still has the band-aid with the gauze on it stuck to her arm – she won’t let me take it off. she walks about like her arm has been mortally injured. not to mention that she still has a band-aid on her thigh – there is no boo-boo there except for the rash from keeping the band-aid on too long.

last night as she slept, i tried to pull off the stupid band-aids, after dousing them in baby oil. in the middle of the operation, eyes closed, tae says, “don’t touch my boo-boo. just look at it.” i failed at removing the band-aids. why do they stick so well and for so long?

then at 2am when she woke up hungry last night, she told me that she couldn’t hold her sippy cup because she had a boo-boo. she asked me to feed her and i nearly lost it. at least she has some common sense because when she woke up at 4am, she asked for her smoothie in a bottle, which is thinner so she could hold it with one hand.