Leaving Lake Wobegon

Cooper has his one year well-child checkup yesterday and, as always, received only the highest praise from our doctor and nurse. One thing, though, was really different. He's no longer above average weight.

In fact, the kid is skinny. So skinny that I demanded he be weighed again in case there was a mistake. He's only at 20% percentile for weight, in fact. I was a bit worried about this- remember, he was born at 90%, and then stayed steady at 75% since then. Until now.

Well, I brought this up with the doctor and after watching Cooper run around in the exam room for a while, she asked when he learned to walk. He got good at it before he was 10 months old, I said, and has been going faster ever since. And so the doctor kindly informed me that early walkers tend to not gain a lot of weight after they learn to walk- far less weight than average age walkers that are still mostly sitting and crawling at this age. Which made perfect sense to me, when she put it that way.

For height, he's at 50%. Cool. Matt and I are both only a tad taller than average, so that makes a lot of sense to me. He's actually been most consistent with height of all his measurements, ever since he was born.

As for his other skills, he continues his regular trends. His gross motor skills (walking, running, squatting, balance) are far, far beyond his age. His fine motor skills are somewhat above average (picking up little objects, using toys, using a spoon, pointing, grabbing). His social and verbal skills are totally normal (a few words, some gestures, being a bit shy with new people and places, lots of babble and nonsense sounds).

He's doin' great, she says. Hooray!