Big Kids

When I was pregnant, I optimistically thought I'd give the whole baby-wearing thing a shot, at least some of the time. Knowing that I wanted to try out a couple of different kinds with my soon-to-be-second-child, a friend sent to me a couple of her slings. She'd given up on using them with her daughter and wanted someone to get some use out of them.

Now, I did try carrying William around in a ring sling for a little while when he was an infant. But he rapidly got so heavy that it hurt my neck and shoulders. By the time he was about three-and-a-half months old, I'd given up on the fabric sling altogether and only occasionally deployed the (sturdier) Baby Bjorn.

But I figured that my second child might not be as big or as heavy as William, so why not give it a second try?

Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha!



See, even Andrew's laughing at that! Ha, ha, funny Mommy! She's so naive and optimistic!

Just for kicks, we weighed our younger child last week. In a diaper and onesie, Andrew weighed...wait for it...15 pounds and four ounces. Now, David is quick to add that Andrew had just eaten and may have had a slightly wet diaper. But still. I know people whose babies didn't weigh 16 pounds until they were a year old, and our kid's going to weigh 16 pounds (or possibly more) by the time he's four months old.

Good grief.

So naturally, people look at Andrew, see his (admittedly quite adorable) chunky little body and chubby arms and legs and figure that he's older than he really is. They tend to ask me, "How old is he?" and seem to expect me to answer, "Oh, he's almost six months old" or something to that effect. (He also holds his head up better than a lot of babies his age. He's so Advanced! He's so Above Average! Call Garrison Keillor!)



So when I say, "He's eleven weeks old," they tend to blink. "Really?" they say, with a slight shake of their heads in disbelief. "Wow..." No one has actually said, "Are you sure?" to me yet, but I can hear them thinking it. For the record, I'm pretty sure how old he is. I was there, after all.

Yes, I grow big kids. I don't know what it is, but I grow big kids. You might not know it to look at David and me, but we have Big Kid DNA in us somewhere.

I took this picture of Andrew snuggling on his daddy's chest for a nap this afternoon,

and it was not lost on me that they may not be able to do this too much longer. He may be too heavy pretty soon. He's already about too heavy now for me to do this. When I was pregnant, I had a belly full of baby compressing my lungs. And now that he's on the outside, if I have him lying on my chest, he compresses my lungs that way, too. Ooof. I'm not sure, actually, how David managed to sleep this way.

Aw, but Andrew's such a sweetie pie, I promise. There's just more of him to love.




Speaking of big kids, you all know that my actual big kid turned four last month. But with all the other stuff going on (hello, massive flood), we just got around to taking him to the pediatrician for his four-year well-child appointment. He is wonderfully healthy, fortunately, and doing just fine.



And yes, William is big, too. For the record, William is a little over 41 inches tall and 42 pounds. That puts him in about the 75th and 90th percentiles respectively for height and weight. Which is about where he's been most of his life, albeit a little higher up on the curve in both categories this time. No surprises there.

Me and my gigantic, albeit adorable and wonderful, boys:


But all joking aside, I'm glad that both my boys are healthy and happy. I may joke around about how big they are, but I'm really lucky that both of them are thriving. Too often, I hear about babies who aren't so big and healthy, and I always have a moment where I think about how thankful I am for my children's good fortune. I could be sitting by an isolette in a NICU somewhere, and thank God that I'm not. If I get a little backache from carrying around a heavy baby, well, that's just not that big a deal in the greater scheme of things.