Ten

There are some newborn babies being rocked in their pumpkin seats at the table behind me at the coffee shop.  They're sleeping, their wrinkled little hands involuntarily curling as their bodies snuggle into handmade blue blankets.  Every now and then I hear a little snort or sniffle, and catch a glimpse of an eye slowly opening, then closing.  It's a baby's business to sleep, sometimes, and these two are working hard.

9 years and some months ago, I was in a coffee shop with Curious Girl, herself getting rocked in a sling.  She was 9 months old, not quite a newborn, but so very new to me.  She loved the foam on the coffee drink Politica got (and we had no idea then what foreshadowing that foam held: it would be years before she could really drink a beverage, years in which she would rather just play with the foam on the surface and ignore the nutrition).  And we loved seeing the drink through her eyes.  The foam was fun.  The spoon was fun.  Just being out of the hotel and out on the streets with a baby--our!! baby!!!--was a miracle.

Today, I sit in the coffee shop alone.  My baby--for she will always be my baby, I tell her, just as I at nearly 50 am still my mother's baby in a way--is off at gymnastics, and then off to dress rehearsal for a figure skating show.  She could drink a whole beverage tonight if she cared to.  She can flip and turn and twirl and jump, on ice or off.  Her life seems a blur (literally, she would tell you.  I love the way she uses literally, as in Literally, I love the way she says literally so often.).  She doesn't just walk places.  She turns cartwheels or forward rolls or walks on her hand.  She does waltz jumps or ballet jumps as she moves from the kitchen to her bedroom.  She's ever in motion, so absorbed in just the sensation of moving that she might not hear us speak.  She's so graceful, so packed with power.

And curious, ever curious.

And 10. Happy birthday, beautiful girl.  Happy birthday, my big, small-and-mighty girl, who's growing into her very own mighty self.

Who Needs a Self-Help Book when Perfection is at Home?

Overheard at breakfast:

....because Mama, how perfect am I? (slight pause) very perfect! I am very perfect.

Perhaps she'll one day write a book to share the secrets of very perfection with the rest of us.

Guest Fiction

I am remembering, these days, that Ellen Goodman stopped writing her columns when her children got old enough to read them. I'm wondering just how to tell Curious Girl stories in this space, wondering when it's OK to tell her stories here, when it's not.

Here's her latest story, an opportunity for you to work out your invented spelling skills. I am loving watching her learn to read and write down her own words, and at the moment, I'm letting my enjoyment of all that wash over my ongoing ethical debate about what of her words it's OK to post here. So, for your pleasure (and my own memory), some guest fiction (focused a bit more on setting than plot, but hey, it's kindergarten):

The Bav Princess, by Curious Girl
Wuns upun u time ther wus a brav princess. She liket being a rav pinses. She live in a kasl. I love my kasl she said, the prinsess. The end.

[self-portrait of Curious Girl]

Theis book is dedkdid to Susan and hr dodre Politica.
[editorial comment: CG asked me if I wanted her to write a story. Of course, I said. What kind of story did I want? one about a brave girl, I said. She offered me a brave princess, and I said that was fine, and so she set to writing. She gigglingly said, at the end, that she was pretending that I was the mom and that Politica was the daughter. I guess she was the house bard or something.]

If She Could Read More, She'd Like Her Pseudonym

more substantive blogging will return someday, when I have better net access and fewer boxes. But for now, lists and posts about my kid seem like the thing to do.

The time: 5:40 a.m.
The place: Curious Girl's bedroom, where I have moved after she came into my bedroom to find out whether it was time to wake up. I have suggested, strongly, that it is time to go back to sleep, and CG has made a short effort to snuggle and rest.

Curious Girl: Mama, I am awake. I want to wake up.
Me: CG, it's early, way early. It is too early to wake up. You were up late last night, and you need more sleep. Let's go back to sleep.
CG: But Mama, we are new here. I am curious about Germany! I am a curious girl. I want to wake up.

Overheard at the End of Busy Day

Curious Girl is whining a bit about how it's not fair that the child lock on the car door prevents her from opening it when everyone else in the car can open their doors by themselves.

Politica: Curious Girl, I have no interest in listening to you whine anymore.

CG: Well, I guess you don't want to be my mom anymore, then.

for a Certain Someone of A Certain Age

When I was One,
I had just begun.

When I was Two,
I was nearly new.

When I was Three,
I was hardly Me.

When I was Four,
I was not much anymore

When I was Five,
I was just alive.

But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever.
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

(A.A. Milne, from Now We Are Six, transcribed from the edition I got from my aunt and uncle for my fifth birthday)

Princess Sita

Curious Girl came up with the title, and she wishes this post could be written in cursive. So use your imaginations on that score. This post is inspired by Librarian Mom and her princess-loving daughter, who got it from Alkelda the Gleeful, whose blog I've never read but will now start because how could anyone not love a name like Alkelda the Gleeful?

We're off to househunt (and me to do some consulting) in Germany! So wish us good househunting vibes, and here's a quick guest blog by Curious Girl herself, with help from Mama.

What do you like about princesses?

They're girls. They're my favorite thing in the whole wide world, because they are all my favorite princesses.

What do princesses do?

Dance.

When you pretend to be a princess, what do you like to do?

Dance. I was Ariel last night and I was swimming with Snow White's baby sister, and she was scared. I said, "It's OK, do you want your sister to come with us?" and she said "goo goo, yes." And then she changed her mind and so Ariel and Baby Sister went swimming alone, and then we did a pattern, and I got so tired swimming I almost fell right down when I was swimming I was so tired. But I didn't! And Phew! That's good.

When I'm Belle, Belle and Cinderella both live in a cottage together. We saw ABC things all over the place. We, Belle and Cinderella, thought the people who do the ABCs a lot, this would be their cottage, so we would take a little walk and went out for a walk in the woods, and we saw candies everywhere! And that was the track. So we picked them up and followed the candy track, and always picked them and picked them and picked them, and when we got home, there was the ABC girl. And we were like "Is that you, ABC Girl? Can we go to your house?" And her hair was all fancy just like ours. She was going back home and she didn't see much candy because we hid it all in her house so she got lost. And that was the track to her house. She was lost almost forever, but not forever, finally. She didn't get home in time for supper but after everyone was asleep and all the wolves and scary things were out, she was home.

What do princesses do that is good?

They kill bad guys with their magic powers. They are kind, isn't that good? They don't be scary, and that is so good.

What are some princess stories that you like?

Cinderella and Belle and Sleeping Beauty, Mulan. Editor's note: we don't actually read a lot of princess stories around here--you can get a good sense of Curious Girl's princess play ideas from her answers so far. But I'm looking forward to her being old enough for Patricia Wrede's Dealing with Dragons and its sequels. Cimorene, Wrede's heroine, is a kindred spirit to Elizabeth, The Paperbag Princess, with a much longer plot and series. And Lauren Child's Princess and the Pea is beautiful, although the humor is a bit over CG's head at the moment.

Anything else you want to say about princesses?

Once upon a time, we were in Disneyland, and when we were in Disneyland, we saw princesses. We went to Belle's area, and there were some princesses I haven't met yet (ed. note: Jasmine and Mulan) and I was so excited to see them. We met each other, and we met each other again at lunch. I liked talking to Belle, and Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella told us stories.

I lost two teeth. I wish I could draw the tooth on the computer. (ed. question: when will Blogger add the KidPix tool?)

Her Strengths

This post was inspired Magpie's post in response to the call from Parent Bloggers Network and Jenifer Fox for stories about children's strenghts.

Two nights ago, Curious Girl threw a fit in the middle of our (very short) violin practice. She started crying and just couldn't stop. Suddenly, she walked away from me, clearly looking for something. "I can't find it, Mama! My Feeling Box is gone and I can't find it!" She walked around in agitation. I spotted it on the other side of the room, and she ran to it, picked it up, and dumped all the little pieces of paper out. "I"m mad, Mama!"

The Feeling Box is a shoe box, covered with CG- drawn stickers of mad, angry, and sometimes happy faces. It has some crayons in it, and it used to have small pieces of paper for drawing on it. When CG gets angry, she'll get her box--or I'll get it for her--and she'll scribble a drawing to show her feelings. She likes to keep the pictures in the box, although two fits ago, she decided to rip them all up and scatter the pieces on the floor. So now it just has tiny papers in it, suitable for throwing. I love that she has created a box that helps her deal with feelings, and that she's turning to it on her own to process hard situations.

I love that CG can be so in touch with her feelings, that she's experimenting with being wildly out of control and self-regulating all at once. I love that she talks to me about her feelings, wanting me to know just how mad or happy she is. I love that she uses words in a tantrum, and I love that she's experimenting with nonverbal ways to express and process feelings, too.

I love that CG thinks about complicated things--we're bringing dinner to Tante Mississippi and Curly Haired Cousin on Sunday. "Why are we doing that?" she wondered. I said it would help them feel better. "Tante Mississippi is still sad sometimes. I am, too. I miss Uncle Quiet. Do you feel a litle sad still." "Just a little," she said. "I'm thinking about other things, because it's more happier. But that's good that we're going to visit them." I could keep adding to my last post indefinitely, it seems: she continues to talk about her wonderful uncle in ways that make me want to laugh and cry all at once.

I love this feeling of connection I have with her, and I love watching her learn to be more independent of that connection. She does, seemingly naturally, what I've spent hours in therapy to learn to do. Maybe I could do this too, when I was five. I don't know. But she can, and it's pretty darn amazing to watch.

Curious Girl has some hard things in her life to think about. Lately, she's been saying that she wishes she still lived with her birth parents. She's starting to realize that being adopted meant that she wasn't cared for by her first parents, that someone wasn't able to keep her. I don't think she's quite put it all together, but it's coming. One night she said, "Whoever gets to keep me is the luckiest." I'm careful here-I know that she will make her own way through these issues, and I never want her to feel the need to protect me or Politica from her feelings about adoption and family. So I say things like, "I wish you knew them better," or "You are an amazing girl with a very loving heart." I want to keep the conversation going, hard though it may be some day. It's hard for me, juggling all the paradoxes of adoption. I wish CG didn't have to deal with the grief and hurt from her past. I wish CG's parents didn't have the burdens they must have had not to be able to parent. Yet life without CG...hard to imagine at this point. It's mind-boggling, the complications. And she knows that, on some level, and she's making sense of it all at her own pace. She's thinking, she's reaching for words, and she has a box full of little papers to help her with the hard stuff. And tonight, that's worth bragging on.

Pinky Promise

We need a little levity around here, what with the drama I've been writing about in my last several posts. Just to show you another side of life in the Granola household, here's a scene from yesterday afternoon, when Curious Girl was having a skating party indoors with all her (imaginary) loved friends. (In case you're wondering how to make an indoor icerink, here's how: scatter paper all over the floor, take off your slippers, and slide around, saying "Mama! I'm skating!").

Curious Girl: You can be the girl police officer who takes care of the party. And you're my cousin. But pretend you didn't know it was my skating party and I didn't know you were coming.

Me: OK. (pause) Hey, cousin, is that you?!?

CG: Cousin!!!! You're here for my party.

Me: Hey, kids! No pushing on the ice. Good job, babies!! Look, CG, aren't the babies doing a good job?

CG, beaming: Yes! I teached them how to skate.

CG skates around, then returns to me. "Pretend you're going to live with me in my house for the whole rest of the year, but I don't know that."

Me: You know, there's not much left of the rest of the year. When we wake up tomorrow, it'll be a whole new year. Now, it's 2007, but tomorrow, it will be 2008.

CG: No way! Tell me the truth.

Me: Really. Right now it's December. I can show you on your calendar. Tomorrow starts January, and it's a whole new year then.

CG: No it is not. I don't believe you. For real? Tell me the truth.

Me, trying not to laugh: Really, truly, for real life. It's going to be 2008 tomorrow. It's the last day of 2007.

CG: But tell me the truth. Pinky promise? (extending pinky) For real, pinky promise?

Me: Pinky promise it is really going to be a new year tomorrow.

CG: I don't believe you.

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This morning, when CG wakes up, having slept in a little after the late night she had at a new year's party with our friends, I tell her "Happy new year."

CG: I didn't believe you yesterday. But today I do.

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Some cool new year's posts are up at Magpie's, Rhymes with Javelin, Profgrrl's (the post before that is a good New Year's meme which I may do later in the week), and Geeky Mom's.

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So however unbelieveable it is that a new year has arrived, may it bring you and yours bountiful hope, joys, and community.

Sometimes, You Get What You Need

Recently overheard chez Granola:

Curious Girl: "I don't want to go to school tomorrow because I'm sick, and New Classmate Who Doesn't Speak a Lot of English Yet will want to kiss me becuase she always kisses me, and I don't want to make her sick. Teacher will say "no, no" but New Classmate won't understand."

Politica: "Well, if you're sick, don't breathe on me because I don't want to get sick."

Curious Girl: "But Mama will take care of us!"

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Curious Girl, walking down the hall, singing: "You can't always get what you want. You can't always get what you need. But if you try sometime you can't always get what you want. This is so catchy! It's catchy!"

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It's the end of the semester and the middle of Hanukkah. May all the latkes be yummy and the celebrations happy, for those who are celebrating. For all us academics, may the distance between now and final grades somehow be covered quickly.

Looping

Just in case anyone needs something to read besides HP7 this morning: I won't get my copy until later today!

I always wondered, before Curious Girl came, whether I would really know when something was wrong with her. "You just know when your baby is sick," my friends would assure me. It turns out they were right: for all that I still consider parenting to be an unfolding relationship in which I'm still coming to know Curious Girl, from the start I knew that there was something wrong with her eating, and that instinct led to all the medical interventions we needed when she first came home. Although I didn't manage to figure out that she had a very high fever the day she had pneumonia (although I did realize she needed a doctor's appointment later that day), I have generally managed to stay on top of CG's physical needs, and, I think, help her with the emotional territory she's navigating. Politica and I seem to be pretty confident with all the parent intuition in these domains.

School has turned out to be a more complicated matter. We're great at simply encouraging exploration and literacy, but in terms of what sort of school we want for CG, things have never been so clear. We obsessed for a year about whether to move her to her current school from the early childhood center we loved. While many smart people said, "Oh, you'll know what to do when the time comes," Politica and I have not had an easy time figuring out whether or not Curious Girl is ready for kindergarten. The corner of the blogosphere I frequent was pretty down on the notion of "redshirting" kindergarteners after that parenting-source-we-love-to-hate, the Times, had a big article about the phenomenon a few months back. I'm not wild about the metaphor, myself. And there are surely bad reasons for having kids repeat school years as well as good ones. But last night, we agreed to have Curious Girl loop back through pre-K.

Curious Girl's pre-K teachers asked us last October if we'd thought about having her repeat pre-K. Not for a second, we hadn't. But they were considering it, for a number of reasons: her complete lack of interest in story-time, her lack of interest in any sort of direct instruction, her drawing skillls (usually not filling a page, usually scribbling), a sort of social immaturity, and finally, her size. (Her size turns out to be irrelevant: we'd have to put her in a room of 3 year olds to look remotely average: next year, she may still be the smallest kid in the room, although presumably the gap will be smaller.) As the year went on, CG definitely developed. She's perceptive, she's verbal, she likes people. But she withdrew, significantly, in the last week of school, I think reacting to her friends' willingness to play in groups of three or four. She still likes to play one-on-one. It was heartbreaking to see the sudden shift in her classroom behavior. Is this developmental, or a personality trait? She doesn't like storytime. At home, she never sits still for the first reading of any story. On second, fourth, hundredth readings she will talk to the pictures and interact with the book. Is this a reading style, or developmental?

We're not sure. Politica--who skipped third grade and was not happy with the social consequences--worries what will happen when CG is a teenager and in a grade with kids who may well be much younger than she is. We worry that CG will miss the friends she has made in this past year. But given that we're not sure, we've decided to err on the side of time, to let her play her way through pre-K one more time. She'll be in the same room, with the same teachers, but with a new group of classmates. She'll continue her bond with one teacher; she'll get to be the big kid, the one who already knows the routines. Maybe she'll be a little sad about not moving to kindergarten, but I'm pretty sure she's going to have a ball doing pre-K again. And all her teachers--including her summer camp teacher, who is a pre-K teacher at the synagogue early childhood center where CG attended before moving to her current school--are clearly relieved that we've decided to loop back. And perhaps CG will be, too. After all, she's been sucking on baby bottles (in the doll/housekeeping area in her summer classroom) these past few weeks. That's certainly a message. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but it does seem a message.

So I feel mostly pretty OK about this. One thing we've learned is that we usually do well when we trust Curious Girl's teachers. We have been lucky to have two wonderful schools for her, and trusting her teachers has worked well for us so far when we've been not sure what to do. So we're trusting them now. I want CG to think school is a happy place, and I want her to have teachers who focused more on her own developmental needs than on a grade's stated outcomes. I don't want her to be rushed.

I'll get to keep my Curious Girl day in the fall, which is a definite plus. And she'll get to have another year in which play and fantasy get to be her primary means of working out new material.

But it has not been an easy decision to rest with.

The Summer of Blessed Events with My Favorite Micromanager

• Is it cheap to use lists to get back in the game after a blogging silence?
• Maybe so, but what better way to offer teasers for half-written posts that I'd like to think you'd be interested in.
• Before this list gets too long, let me urge anyone with Massachusetts connections to make contact with their state legislators to protect marriage equality in that state. If you live in Massachusetts, urge your legislator to vote against the proposed referendum on marriage; if you know people in Massachusetts, urge them to call. It's not a good idea to put civil liberties up for popular vote. Mass Equality has an easy-to-use site to see whom to contact. Families like ours--children like Curious Girl--deserve the protection of family law. Please call.
  
• I just got back from an academic conference of department chairs. Members of my subfield were pretty regularly characterized in anecdotes as being less scholarly, less flexible, and less understanding that members of subfields more clearly central to the history of the discipline. I'm not sure this is a good way to create a path for the future of our discipline. I wrote a lot about that on the evaluation form.
• But now I better understand what one of my predecessor-chairs told me once (a predecessor from another subfield that is similarly not-so-central to the history of our discipline, at least as how that history is chronicled by those who fancy themselves central to it): a subdisciplinary listserv was awash in congratulations after news of my predecessor's chairship was announced, with other members saying what a wonderful advance it was for the subfield. At the time, I thought "well, aren't things changing? Here in our department we are pretty well integrated." But in the field at large, apparnetly not.
• This is, perhaps, an example of the inflexibility some of the other conferees were noting.
• Curious Girl is, however, nothing if not flexible, in a "let's do that again and again and again" kind of way. She has invented a number of great new car games
1. H@nn@h Matanna. Inspired by the girl-idol of that name (although some googling tonight suggests that CG is confusing HM with H!llary Duff), this game starts off "Who wants to be Hannah?....OK, I"ll be Hannah, you be Matanna." It requires a microscope, er, microphone, for Hannah, which can be easily made from a magazine or other travel literature picked up at a rest stop. Hannah starts, and the call-and-response singing begins. Some times it's real pop singing (Hey everyone, get up and dance...), sometimes it's narrative (We're in the car and I see a cow...) and sometimes it gets all meta (Why are you singing a short song?). Continue until Hannah says the show is over.
   
2. Kid. Who wants to be CG's favorite teacher? Who wants to be her elder daughter? Who wants to be her dog? Let the roleplays begin! This game can take a family of three for miles and miles.
   
3. Teacher. A variant on Kid, and a variant on games of school everywhere, this one has actual characters from CG's class. Guess who gets to be CG's favorite teacher every time?
   


• Curious Girl has been in a pool three times in the past two days, and in none of those pool times did she need to use the bathroom and in none of those times did she cause the pool to be closed for chemical treatment. This is the Blessed Event of the summer, an event I was never sure would come.
  
• CG has been sleeping with the aquarium that used to hang in her crib (something like this) as part of reconnecting with her babyhood since turning five. Last night, she said it was her computer and that she would use it to distract her while I gave her eardrops. "I have to order a book," she said, and typed Stellaluna into the computer. Then she told me I could be the bookstore, and I had to wrap the book with paper, dab it with glue, and wrap it up and send it to her (while she used her computer to transmit more info to me like her name and address). When the book arrived, she said, "Honey! I got you a book," and she read me Stellaluna. "The end," she finally prounounced. "Now you read it for real." And I did. After my "the end," she said, "I want to talk to Stellaluna," and had an adorable conversation about how she read Stellaluna at her new school, and whehter Stellaluna wanted lots of fruit to eat.
• Tonight she watched Star Wars on her computer. She created characters using the various buttons on the aquarium and asked for my help in naming them all. "Who's going to be the green guy? with the ears?" Really, she could be a very happy girl doing nothing but pretending all day long. Why is there nothing about pretending in discussions of kindergarten readiness?
• CG is very in charge of her pretending. Today, she walked me through a long script in which I was the mom, she was a dog, and my imaginary kid wanted a dog at the pet shop. So I put the kitty litter back, and got the white dog. I'll let you all guess what I really bought at the pet shop. I'll also let you all note who has clearly been paying attention to the fact that one of the ways I help CG work through problems is by setting up narrative play space. I guess she figures you can use the same technique on her mama.
• Kindergarten readiness has been well-discussed around the blogosphere lately. I wish it settled my own choices about CG.
• I love the comments on my last post: thanks for sharing our enthusiasm for Panda World. Everytime we got stuck in a traffic jam or slowdown, CG would say, "Oh no! We're stuck in Panda World!" I am very grateful for readers who put up with my erratic rhythms.
  

They Really Should

The scene: a shady bench at the zoo, opposite the kangaroo and emu area, just downhill from the elephant area, and on the way out of the African plains section of the zoo. It's mid-afternoon, and judging from the number of children who pass by in tears, a lot of kids are tired out from a long, warm day at the zoo.

Just after two crying children pass us in quick succession, Curious Girl turns to us and says, "But people should be happy! It's a good day! It's spring break!"

The Perfect Size, or I Hate Petite

We spend a lot of time at playgrounds, and Curious Girl usually attracts attention with her feats on the monkey bars: she can go across and back, many times in a row, and has no fears about going by herself across monkey bars that are high enough that I (at 5'9") can stand upright and still need to reach up with my arms to hold her waist. When she's working her away across the monkey bars, other parents will ask how old she is. And their response to her age is remarkably consistent: "Oh, she's tiny!" We get the same reaction in the pool in the summer, when people watch her moving around, trying to persuade me to leave her alone in the pool because "I can swim, Mama, all by myself! For real!" "She's so tiny!" people will say.

When CG was younger, people didn't ask how old she was. They just said things like "I can't believe she's walking so well" (when she was two) or "Wow, she can really talk!" (when she was three). When I would say her age, they said, "She's so small for her age!" or "Really?!? She's so TINY!"

And then sometimes they ask me if she was premature. Or they look at me and say, "Oh, she'll start growing," or tell me the story of their cousin or brother who was the shortest boy in the class until he was 16 and then just shot up and is now 6' tall.

As Andrea has already and eloquently written, there is really no good reason to be pointing out to strangers how small a child is. I'm no longer quite as conscious as I once was of where CG falls on the growth grids, in part because we are no longer having monthly weight and measurement checks. But I'm still pretty conscious of the fact that her weight and head size are off the charts and her height is in the first percentile. I will not easily forget all the time I have spent talking to doctors about her weight, her eating, and her growth. And I can still rattle off the number of calories in lots of foods we've offered in our attempts to boost her weight--and I am still very sensitive to conversations about food and children because of the lengths we've gone to in encouraging CG's growth and eating. It's been easier to be less worried about her growth as she has gotten older, since her continued development charms her doctors as well as anyone else.

Well, anyone else except those strangers who can't believe she is her age. Curious Girl is now getting old enough to really pay attention to these kinds of comments, and I wonder what on earth the people who make them think they are doing for CG's self-image. "Am I petite?" she asked me recently. "I hate petite." "You're just the right size," I told her. "Your feet are touching the ground when you stand up. You're just the right size for you." And she is just the right size. And I am fiercely working to help her know that and remember it in her heart.

Now, things are getting slightly trickier in that most of CG's same-age friends have moved from 5-point restraints to booster seats, and CG is longing for a booster seat and the across-the-shoulder seatbelt. At the rate we're going, she'll be riding in a booster seat until her prom and in her 5 point seat until sometime in the middle of elementary school, and there's just nothing to be done but wait for her to grow. She's not good at waiting, and while the small boys in her grade seem to be having more social difficulties with smallness than the small girls, I know that things might get more complicated for her as she moves on.

But I wish people who think--correctly--that her movements on the monkey bars are so amazing would simply say, "She's beautiful. Look at her go!"

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We got discharged from developmental pediatrics today. Our developmental pediatrician came in, looked at CG, reviewed her accomplishments of the last year, and said, finally, "She's developing perfectly!" We can go back to her if we have any issues in the future, but for now, we can simply track our well child visits with our regular pediatrician. The developmental pediatrician coordinated all of CG's feeding tube care, and she was always the most conservative voice in our medical team. She worried about CG's size and kept reminding us that small head size was linked, statistically with various other problems. She was also a good advocate for Curious Girl, and on the whole we were pleased with her. But still, it's not always easy to hear those conservative perspectives. So it was with particular delight that we had our appointment today, and saw this doctor so pleased with CG's growth in the past 11 months (11.9 kg to 12.6 kg (27.7 lbs): 1. 5 pounds in a year! and a little upward movement in the height-to-weight ratio). CG is developing perfectly: she may be a bit late to start drawing arms and legs on people (at the moment, she's started drawing faces only), but she's an awesome climber and balancer and is verbally quite adept and adorable. And it was wonderful to see our doctor smiling at CG, teasing her about her Winnie-the-Pooh dress, and enjoying seeing how much she's grown and changed from the pale, hungry-and-not-eating infant she first met four years ago.

So if you see us on the playground, and you wonder how old she is, and I tell you, please remember: "She's beautiful! Look at her go!" is always an appropriate response. Let the children you talk about hear you saying supportive and beautiful things about them. It can't hurt, and it will ease a mother's heart.