Day 126 - Hispanics Are Too Tall

We had our four month check-up this week with our pediatrician Dr. Osher. Our doctor just came back from her maternity leave this month. She had a baby girl a week after we had our twins.

The first thing the nurse did is weigh and measure the kids. Emma is 24 inches (long, not her waist) and 15 pounds 10 ounces; this puts her above average on the charts, but thankfully pretty proportional. As for Andrew, he is 23 1/2 inches (long, not his penis) and 14 pounds 5 ounces (his penis, not his body). Sadly, the chart puts Andrew in the 15th percentile for height and 30th percentile for weight. Our doctor told us that recently the charts changed in California with the height and weight percentiles increasing due to the large Hispanic population. Based on that, we are going to feed Andrew plenty of tortillas and have him eat anything that falls out of a pinata.

Both of the kids also like to turn their heads to the right. You can look at the back of their heads and see that their head is flatter on the right side. So we need to do these neck exercises with them every day. Basically we just need to pivot and twist their neck to the left several times. My suggestion was to velcro the left side of their heads to the crib, but Lisa just rolled her eyes and called me a dumbass.

The kids also got their second set of shots today for various diseases like diphtheria and tardiness (or was it retardiness?). It's sad to see your babies cry bloody murder when they get four needles pierced into their chubby little thighs. But to make them feel better, I shot myself up with heroin to set an example for them -- although I also cried afterwards because I thought a walrus was chasing me with a machete.

Lisa also had a long, long , long, long, long list of questions for the doctor. So long that we didn't leave from our 9am appointment until almost 10:30am. Most of the questions were probably standard questions that most parents have for their doctor. When should they start solid foods? Do we still need to swaddle them? What do we do about leaky diapers? What's the best way to hide cigar burns? Should we be afraid of social services?

One question that we had that I'll spend a little time talking about tomorrow is sleeping. Andrew has developed a pretty good sleeping schedule, but we have been struggling with Emma. So tomorrow I'll talk about what the good doctor suggested to make Emma a better sleeper!