Stats

Hardly the measure of a birthday, but for curious grandparents and those who enjoy parsing the box scores--and because I need to wind down from a day's worth of midterm exam number-crunching before bed--here are Alice's 12-month measurements, a placeholder for further birthday updates to come:

28.75 inches (32nd percentile)
18 pounds, 7.5 ounces (9th percentile)

Yes, she's back down at the bottom of the weight charts, which we'd expected since she has been sick with colds and eating poorly for the last month. But our pediatrician didn't seem concerned this time and instead spent the visit affirming all signs of Alice's thriving development.

Still, it was interesting to go home and look at the girls' baby books side by side. At Edith's 6-month appointment she was 18 pounds, 8 ounces. She tripled her birth weight in the first year; Alice doubled hers in the same time. Edith was over 23 pounds at a year. Her weight made it possible for us to make a ceremony of turning her carseat to face forward on the afternoon of her birthday, hoping fervently that her being able to see us might help forestall the screaming we'd endured in the car for a year. Alice is still rear-facing for the time being (20 pounds is the minimum weight to face forward), which is fine with us, as she isn't nearly as angry about car rides as Edith was at this age and rear-facing is the safer position anyway.

She did get a brand-new big-girl carseat from her parents for her birthday, as she was maxing out of her baby bucket seat lengthwise. We'd put away Edith's previous carseat for Alice, but unfortunately we put it in an unfinished part of the basement, and when we went to retrieve it we found the whole thing mildewed, from cover and straps down to the styrofoam core. So our poor storage choice resulted in Alice's getting something new for once. She seems tickled pink to be in her Britax throne, and the princesses in the backseat babble and giggle away with each other.

Oh, and the mean on the midterm was 82.3. Good night.