Ava has never been anywhere near being a chubby baby. She was a healthy 7 pounds, 9 ounces at birth, but that’s as high as she’s ever been on the weight percentile charts. Leah and I were…I guess “worried” isn’t too strong a word, for a while, that our little girl would have trouble putting on weight. But she stayed fairly healthy, and while she hasn’t gotten fat, she does seem to be growing steadily along the y axis.
When I was Ava’s age, there were no such concerns for me. Witness:
That’s me with my mom in my grandparents’ yard in Burlington, overlooking the Mississippi. And that’s my belly, in all its glory. I was generally a lean baby, but obviously I had my fuller moments. After I started walking, my Buddha bulge burned off in a hurry, and the remainder of my childhood was spent in the constant pursuit of enough calories to fuel my incessant mischief-making and my weed-like growth. Let’s just say I ate a lot.
I’ll frequently look at Ava when she’s running around in the buff before her bath and try to superimpose some mental image on her of what she’ll look like when she grows up. Given her genetic heritage, I figure “willowy” is out of the picture. But she doesn’t look particularly stocky to me, either. I waver between hardly being able to wait another second for her to grow up, and dreading every moment I notice that she’s getting taller or her hair is getting longer.