It's Like Sputnik!

(Ten points to the first person to identify the source.)

LO had his 6 month checkup and vaccination torture yesterday. I love our pediatrician's office. There is a receptionist there who always chats about home renovation with me, as she is familiar with the house we bought. Yesterday, I finally met the woman who works there who used to own our house (which is why the receptionist is familiar with it) and learned some of the reasons why there are inexplicable corners and hollow panel doors upstairs. (It apparently used to be all one large room). I also love that the nurse has gotten to know LO quite well, and makes sure she gets a giggle out of him before she starts wielding syringes at him. Dr. B is friendly and funny and shares a little more personal information than I'm used to every time I see her, but I feel like she and I could be friends. Overall, it was quite a good visit.

One of my favorite parts of taking LO to the pediatrician is finding out how much he's grown. He's quite the peanut, but he's a growing peanut, at least. As of 11 am yesterday morning, Eastern Standard Time, LO measures 24.5 inches in height, 13 lbs 1 oz in weight, and 43.5 centimeters in head circumference. For most people, those numbers are kind of meaningless, so I will provide you with the percentile that LO is in compared to other babies. He is in the third percentile for height. He is slightly below the third percentile for weight.

He is in the forty-fifth percentile for cranium hugeitude.

All of this is J's doing. While I doubt that I set any world records for height at any point in my life, I do know that I was a roly-poly baby and hovered comfortably on the upper end of the bell curve for weight through much of my childhood. In addition, my head has always been quite average. LO and J apparently share the enormous noggin gene, as well as the "eat-anything-and-never-gain-an-ounce" gene.

Dr. B is not really worried about LO's smallitude, despite the fact that he'll have to develop some killer neck muscles to cart around his keppy (more on that later). I'm never worried about LO's growth except for when I'm at the doctor's office. 100 years ago, they didn't have these growth charts and no one would have cared what percentile their baby was in as long as he was thriving. LO is thriving--growing and laughing and learning and getting the glint in his eye that shows me he will soon be terrorizing the cats. So there's really no need to worry about his relative size.

Which brings me to the other legacy J has given to LO. The B side of the family are some impressive muscular specimens. There are some incredible pictures of my sister-in-law mugging for the camera at her wedding and showing off her biceps, which I would personally have to devote my life to creating and sustaining, because missing even one bicep curl would result in the deflation of the muscle to pre-exercise levels of meh-ness. J, of course, is my own personal barrel-chested bastard--so-nicknamed by friends. It can be a little disheartening to realize that I will never achieve the level of muscle definition that the B family earns through regular exercise, like showering and lifting gallons of milk. (Just sitting while muscular burns more calories for J than I do when running for my life.) Ain't genetics grand?

We have noticed that LO does seem to have a preternatural level of muscular development. When he was born, the doctor at the hospital commented on the definition of his shoulders and biceps. (That's why he was so restless that last few months. He was working out in utero!) Everyone has noticed how well he holds up his (very large) head, even when he was still doing the head-bobbing ballet. As of now, LO is focusing on his ab-work so that he can take over for Tony Little in hawking the Ab-Roller. Despite it being a little early, he's working very hard at sitting up on his own, and has shown himself to be quite the stomach-cruncher.

All of this is to say that I might end up having the only five year old with a six-pack in a few years.

It also makes LO look pretty cute. He's small, but he's proportional, even with the noggin to end 45% of all other noggins. I just have to remember that though he may look like a miniature adult, he's still not ready for big boy weights when we work out. He'll have to make do with cardio for a little while longer.