Stats:
Weight: 29.8 (70th percentile)
Height: 36 inches (85th percentile)
He's three feet tall, so if you go by the "double the height at 2" thing he'd be 6 feet as an adult. Michael thinks he'll be taller, though, because he shot up five more inches after he turned 18.
We had to fill out an "Ages and Stages" questionnaire for this visit, as we do periodically. He was doing all the stuff on the questionnaire except jumping! He tries to imitate us jumping, but he doesn't really get any "air" between himself and the ground; he just kind of nudges forward. I guess we need to go to bounce houses and trampolines and stuff more!
The doctor recommended Stress-Free Potty Training as a guide for getting started. Apparently you take a quiz to determine what approach would work best for your child and then only read those chapters. I've been totally lazy about getting started with this even though he was telling me when he had pooped for a while, so I need to get on this, I guess. He also recommended Zyrtec for him since he said his nose was swollen and it looked like allergies. Both Michael and I have them, too.
He was behind on a couple of vaccinations since there was a shortage on one of them last time, and we had split up the MMR into three parts and still needed mumps. They went ahead and gave him the full MMR because Merck no longer does those separately. He was really good during the shots. He just cried for a minute and then very easily got distracted when I pointed out his orange bandaid. He hated the finger prick and was crying quietly and saying "no more" while she did it. :(
I had mixed feelings about the fact that I'm the same age as Ben's doctor. On one hand, I was a little relieved because I actually thought he was much younger (his freckles threw me!). On the other, despite my total lack of interest in becoming a doctor, it still sometimes depresses me that other people my age have taken their education so much farther than me. But I've always been really glad he's Ben's doctor. He's really progressive but very funny and laid-back.
Here's a picture of Dr. Denison with some random baby:
And here's Ben yesterday. We were in the "Bears" room:
We asked him what he thought about our main behavioral question about Ben, which is why he sometimes seems to get upset when he's reciting letters and numbers or otherwise labeling things. We never drill him on any of this stuff, he totally seeks it out. But sometimes he'll be in the middle of it and seem to get upset. We wondered if it was our reaction. We are enthusiastic, but we try not to take it over the top. Then I thought maybe he wanted more information rather than just us agreeing that he had labeled something correctly. The doctor said he is probably really interested in continuing, but his short attention span is making him feel conflicted. He said he is probably also anxious to please. This made me sad and proud at the same time. :(
He doesn't need to see Ben again until he's three, and then he'll have a big boy exam where they take his blood pressure, etc. Ugh, I can't believe how big he's getting!
