Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Growing Like a Weed

Millie had a check up last week. I was kind of looking forward to it because we are continually being asked how old she is.  When we report her age, the first response we generally get is, "Wow.  She's tall."  I hadn't really thought about it since I see her every day. 

So, how tall is she?

I'm happy to report that Millie is 37" tall.  That's well over the percentile lines on the little chart thing-y at the doctor's office.  I checked out the chart and saw that 37" is the average height of a 3-year-old.  Oh.  No wonder everyone thinks she's tall.

The doc did give me some food for thought.  She said to make sure we are her advocates.  With her being tall, people (teachers, other parents, other kids) may expect more from her that she's not capable of.  She needs to have the chance to act like a two-year-old.  The "mine"s and "gimme"s are natural and to be expected.  Luckily, she's still practically bald and constantly has a pacifier in her mouth, so she's just seen as tall and not older

However, her height and weight played in our favor tonight when she got into a bottle of melatonin.  We've been giving the big girls some small doses of it to help them fall asleep at night.  It's been working very well.  But Millie is tall enough to reach lots of things on the countertops.  (That's not the part that played in our favor.  In fact, that's opposite of our favor, but anyway....) 

As the kids were heading up to bed, we discovered the melatonin pills all over the floor.  Not cool.  But if she took any of the pills, they didn't effect her too much.  I went to check on her 20 minutes after I laid her down as the nice lady at the poison control center suggested, and the sound of the door woke her up.  Then she wanted me to hold her.  What could I do?  I was a bit nervous about the uncertainty of her dabble in supplemental health and let her stay up with me.  And she did.  I think we're in the clear. 

So, here's my track record with poison control:

Emma -- no calls.
Abby -- one call because she ate half a jar of Bag Balm.
Matt -- no calls.
Millie -- one call for a possible melatonin spree.

Anyone else see a pattern here?

I'm just hoping for a quiet night.  And for a supplemental-melatonin-free toddler.

4 comments:

Lucky Larson's said...

Pepper can open some child proof bottles and got into my moms melatonin one night also. We called Posion control also. Funny thing is that we have called posion control about 4 times, but never from my house--always from my mom's.
Sedona ate a mushroom growing in mom's backyard...Pepper helped herself to melatonin--and honestly I can't remember what the other two times where for--thank goodness for posion control!!

Jabon said...

I think we are in for this with Ashton also, he is tall and keeps dragging full cups off the table onto his face!

Unknown said...

Well Jabon, it could be worse. You could be coffee drinkers, or addicted to hot cocoa. Both items are not good for toddlers to dump on their faces.

Let's look at the "cup half-full" you didn't have to go visit the ER and have her tummy pumped. That would have been awful!

I'm glad to hear all is well with Stretch, er, I mean Millie. Fingers are crossed that life will get easier with the 2 year old.

photomama said...

My boy is like your Millie... kinda freakishly tall. He has never been on the "chart" he is so far above it it is scary. My problem with him also is that he has been an amazingly good talker from an early age, so people seriously were trying to treat him like he was 4 when he was only 2 and confused at the maturity gap. I had to keep reminding them of his age. It was frustrating. Now that he is 4 and the size of a 6 or 7 year old it is a little bit better since the tantrums have calmed a bit and most people know that he is just really tall. Good luck. You really DO have to be your child's advocate...ahhhh...the joys of being a parent!