Natalie's 15 Month Update

Natalie just had her 15th month checkup and all is good.  She has a whole mouthful of teeth (it's crazy) and is now changing her growing curve.  Instead of being in the 80th plus percentile in height and weight, she has dropped significantly and is down to 66th percentile in hight, but 3rd percentile in weight!  We have discussed her weight on several visits now, but the pediatrician has finally said she is not concerned because of all the foods she eats and the fact that she is still growing in height.  (1" in the last 3 months).  She does eat a ton.  She can eat an entire chicken & apple sausage (skin included) and cry for more.  If we let her, she would probably eat 5 bananas in a sitting.  (We limit her to 1 a day).  She has eaten and entire container of blueberries in one sitting before.  The girls eats full meals 6-8 times a day.  Calorie intake is definitely not a problem!

We are also closely watching her words.  She has a lot of words, but they are very unclear.  Our family and Molly understand her words, based on context and her beginning word sounds (which is typically the whole word for her).  But other people probably wouldn't understand.  The pediatrician said she should clearly have a handful of words in the next three months or we will be doing some hearing tests.  Of course, Natalie understands a great deal, so I question whether there is a hearing issue, but I'm fine with conducting tests if there are indications of a problem.  We can tell her "Go find sissy in the green room" and she will take off across the house to the green room and look for Alli.

Of course, one day after the doctor visit and she started saying "Ma" clear as day.  Not Mama, but Ma.  I'm good with Ma.  And then Molly said she swears she said "iPad" clear as day yesterday.  I told her Kim would be thrilled, but there is no way "iPad" is going down as her first clear word.  So I say "Ma".  And of course Kim says "iPad", even though none of us have heard it yet except Molly.  And of course Alli, Ms. non-biased 5 year old, corrects all of us and tells us that Natalie's first clear word was "No", which is probably the most accurate account.

So here are her stats:

Height:  31"  (66th percentile)
Weight:  19.2 lbs (3rd percentil)
Head Circum:  45-1/2 cm (37th percentile)

Yes, still not quite at 20 lbs, so we are keeping her rear facing in the car seats.  She doesn't seem to mind, and she doesn't look too uncomfortable.  I know we kept Alli rear facing until about 18months when we noticed she was craning her neck to look out the window and we figured that would do more damage than turning her around.  We are waiting for Nat to start doing the same and then she will be flipped right away.  We'll see what happens.  Natalie is typically entertained by her sister, not things outside the window.