3 months & 3 years

August 2, 2010 at 6:01 am (sisters, status report)

“Eh, what’s up, doc?”

- Bugs Bunny

About two weeks ago, the girls took a trip to their doctor for wellness checkups – 3 months and 3 years, respectively.

T, being an old woman of 3, has been downgraded to once-a-year wellness visits, so she hadn’t been seen since her second birthday. She’s 32 pounds and 37 inches high, which puts her exactly into the  50th percentile for both height and weight. Hooray for my healthy big girl!

They gave her a developmental test to see where she fits in, and as usual she blew them away with her mad Teagle skills. Personally, I thought the whole thing was a waste of time, as there was nothing on there that she couldn’t do at last year’s visit, and mostly even before. Still, the tests were a hoot, and the doctor was just as amused as I was by T’s often adorable answers. . . They tested fine and gross motor skills, vision, hearing, and memory, along with comprehension and other such nonsense. Many of the tests involved showing T an image, and asking her what it was. T went way beyond the expected every time. For example, an image like the one below was shown;

The idea was to see if she could recognize that it was a human figure, even though it was missing pieces. . . not *quite* sure what they were trying to prove there, but okay!  When the doc asked her what it was a picture of, she fixed her with the patented and piercing Teaball-thinks-you-must-be-a-complete-and-total-moron stare (which she used quite a bit that day) and said;

“I don’t know! It looks like a one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged smiley. . . (then she looks at me) Mom! Where is its other foot??!”

It pretty much went like that until she asked the doctor;

“Can I please use your stethoscope to check your heartbeat and make sure you’re all healthy?”

Doc said she passed. . .

For some reason I thought that by the time she turned three, her vocabulary would be starting to even off with others her age. I mean, they have to catch up eventually, right? Not yet. Doc says that she’s still about a year or maybe even two ahead of where most kids her age are verbally. Not only is she “clear and easy to understand,” but she is “familiar with and regularly uses three and even four syllable words comfortably,” and has “wonderful sentence structure.” So yay for Teaball!

She did end up getting  a needle, or a ‘poke,’ as she called it. It was the updated version of the pneumococcal vaccine. She took it well, but this one was almost as hard for me as her first infant shots were. I had Ro in my arms, so I felt just awful when T started to cry and I wasn’t able to scoop her up and comfort her as well as she deserved. I suppose I should have thought about that before I scheduled their appointments together, though technically, T wasn’t scheduled for any vaccinations this appointment. It broke my heart to see her little face crumple when that needle went in. This shot is different from all the ones that came before, because she’s old enough now that I KNOW she’ll remember it next time. T did well though, and after a quick wail, a couple of mommy kisses, one-armed hugs, and a tearful “That poke really hurt me and I didn’t like it!” She was settled down happily with an orange lolli, and it was Robee’s turn!

Ro also had a great appointment. She weighed in at 11 pounds and 11 ounces, and is now 25 and 3/4 inches tall! This puts her in the 45th percentile for weight, and the 95th for height. Loooooooong, lean, and healthy as can be (I wonder if they gave us the wrong baby in the nursery, cuz’ neither of her parents are tall or slender). Ro is an all-around strong little lady, and the doc says that her “vocal skills are advanced for this age.” I’m not putting much stock in that, and I don’t think that what Ro does really can be considered ‘vocal skills,’ although it’s adorable. Time will tell what her strengths and weaknesses will be. She also had her set of shots, which I always find difficult – especially when they’re so tiny. She did well, though, and calmed down pretty quickly. She’ll have another appointment in a few more weeks, so I’ll post a better update on her then. I can’t wait to see how much bigger she’s gotten, because I swear, this kid is growing faster than I can type!