Holy smokes again!

Brooke is the talk of the office when she visits the doctor. Really, she's the talk of most places that we go, as people love to stare and smile at her adoringly. She's that cute. (Humility is one of my strongest assets.) It's typically the cheeks and the gummy smiles that people fawn over. When we go to the doctor, they aren't gossiping about her beauty; it's her size. She got another "Holy smokes!" from the pediatrician today. Apparently when the nurse handed her Brooke's chart outside the door to our room, she said "Your next baby is a BIG one."

How big? She weighed in at 19 lbs 7 oz and measured 28.25 inches long (her weight is represented on the chart by the purple dot; the red dot is average for her age, at 13.5 lbs). The doctor's absolutely not concerned over her size at all. She's proportionate, just largely so. She is currently the size of the average 10-month-old (the green dot). She's in the 25th percentile....for 1-year-olds. Yes, that's right; 25% of children blowing out the candle on their first birthday cake are Brooke's 4-month-old size.

Due to her size, the doctor and I both agree that she could benefit from rice cereal. Starting tonight, Brooke will get cereal twice a day in between regular feedings, in the hopes that this will fill her big ol' belly and squash this constant hunger I've been noticing. (Fingers crossed this helps her go back to sleeping through that 2 a.m. feeding!) After several weeks, if she's reacting well to the cereal and we get into a groove with it, we can introduce veggies and fruits! So exciting for her, as she's been enviously watching us eat (and grabbing for our food) for a while now!

The pediatrician was super-impressed with her developmentally. She is "advanced" for 4 months. So many times during our appt she would start saying "Soon, she'll start doing [insert milestone here]..." and I would stop her to say that she has already done it. For example, tripod sitting (sitting up on her own using her hands for support) is really a 6 month step - Brooke's already doing it. She told me we need to be very careful where we put her and always just assume that she will roll around (i.e. stop plopping her on the couch when we need to quickly do something...)

Poor baby girl had to have 2 shots and was not too thrilled about that. Mommy fed her mere moments after getting them and it soothed her immediately. She also got Tylenol just before which helped lessen the pain as well. (Get this - because our 10-month-old, whoops I mean 4-month-old is so big, a dose of Tylenol for her is 1.5 dropper-fulls!) The little doped-up peanut is blissfully napping as we speak and has already forgiven me for putting her through this torture :)