A little late with this post, but just in case any of you are still interested...
Lola and Jackson turned 15 months old on June 11th and on the 15th we went for their 15 months check up.
Hard to believe, really, that we're already here. If the past 15 months have gone by this fast then how fast will the next 15 months go? I put the kids on a waiting list for a mother's day out/preschool for next fall. That's NEXT SEPTEMBER, a year from now. "Is it too soon to put them on the list?," I asked the woman on the phone. "Absolutely not!" she said. And off I went to drop off our applications and a check. It's just all happening too fast. Before I know it I'll be dropping them off at kindergarten.
So on to the check up. The stats:
Jackson weighs 22 pounds 10 ounces, is 31 inches long and his head circumference is 18 3/8 inches. He is in the 25th-50th percentile for all his measurements. Lola is still significantly smaller than her brother, weighing in at 20 pounds 2.5 ounces (10-25th percentile). She remains between 2 1/2 and 3 pounds smaller than Jack. She is 30 inches long (25-50th percentile), an inch shorter than Jack at this check up when she was only 1/4 inch shorter at 12 months. Her head circumference is 17 1/4 inches (10th percentile). All numbers aside, both babies, er... toddlers, are growing nicely.
The doctor asked about their developmental milestones and both Lola and Jackson are meeting them all. It never fails to thrill me as she checks off the items on the list without pausing, going through them quickly and anticipating that my answer will be "yes" to all her questions. Every time we go through this check up ritual I think how wonderful it is that we can breeze through the milestones. I don't know how much time will have to pass before I stop thinking about how these checkups could be so different. For me the milestone checklists are just as much about what we AREN'T doing as what we are. About how we aren't charting Lola and Jackson's development based on both chronological age and adjusted age. About how I'm not constantly looking for signs of the long term effects of extreme prematurity (sensory issues, feeding disorders). About how we aren't dealing with blindness or deafness or cerebral palsy or any of the disabilities that Aaron and I were warned about by the doctors in Colorado. I don't think about it nearly as much as I used to. But going through the milestones checklists... they still bring it all right back.
They really make me so very thankful. Thankful for Aaron and my parents and my family and Aaron's family and all our friends and all my doctors and nurses. Thankful for the medicines and procedures and monitors and even that awful hateful magnesium sulfate. Thankful for the doctors and the incredibly patient nurses at the NICU and the feeding tubes and the babies' treatments and medicines and the hospital grade breast pump. Thankful for everyone and everything that helped get us here, where our milestones, smiling and head lifting and sleeping through the night and sitting and eating solids and crawling and walking and talking, are amazing because babies are amazing, but not at all unexpected.
And the rest of the checkup...
the doctor and I spoke about Jackson's apparent intolerance of soybean oil. She said I could get an expensive test to confirm the allergy, but since he has had the reaction 3 times and none of them were severe, the test isn't really necessary. So for now we're just simply trying to avoid soybean oil. It's not really that hard since most things that are good for you don't contain it. No more Jiff or Sabra hummus. He'll have to stick to the all natural healthier options.
Lola's foot is still turning in but no intervention yet. We're hoping she'll grow out of it.
And that's pretty much it. It was a pretty uneventful appointment. And I'm so thankful for that.
