If you are thinking to yourself, "Wow, Kim hasn't mentioned Dr. Awesome lately," it's because we haven't seen her since the Bear's 6-month check-up. This is a new record for us; I felt like for awhile, we were seeing her on a near-weekly basis. But then Scotty got his 6-month shots, started eating porridge (among other things) and he has been blissfully healthy.
The visit on Friday was due to the fact that he had been on the weird bottle-strike since Monday. At first, I wrote it off. Then Tuesday, he barely consumed 20 ounces. Same on Wednesday. Thursday we hit an all-time new low and only managed to consume a meager 16 ounces in 24 hours. He is doing great with solids - porridge + fruit + yogurt in the morning, 2 veggies + 2 fruits for lunch, and a fruit and protein for snack - so I wasn't too worried. He is definitely consuming enough calories, but it was the liquids I was worried about. And with the temperature heating up in Vegas, I was surprised at how panicked I felt when the thought of him dehydrating hit me. It was like August 2009 all over again.
Hence the visit.
I was kind of bummed that we had to break our non-doctor streak (really hoped to make it to our 9-month check-up, only 11 days away!) but we went anyways. And by the time we got him undressed on and on the scale, I was so busy trying to prevent him from diving off of the scale that I didn't quite comprehend what the medical assistant was telling me as she adjusted the weights.
"Twenty...and six," she said out loud, as she noted it in his chart.
"Twenty pound, six ounces?" I asked as I held on to a squirmy Bear and frantically wracked my brain for his six month stats. Was he 21 pounds at that appointment? 20 pounds? Are we losing weight?
"No," she said. "Twenty-SIX pounds."
I let out this weird laugh. And then hugged my gi-normous child who was all warm and snuggly in just his diaper. Oh, god, I thought. I am going to get yelled at for over-feeding him.
But I didn't. Dr. Awesome was, as usual, awesome. She was very sweet and gentle with our little Bear and even poked him in the tummy playfully. (I think we both expected him to let out a giggle like the Pilsbury Doughboy.) She confirmed my thoughts: Scotty is off the charts (+99%ile) for both weight and head size (measuring 19.5 inches around) and is in the 97%ile for height (31.5 inches, making our carseat 1.5 inches too short. Whoops.) She wasn't worried about his lack of liquid consumption and said that he is ready to eat whatever he wants: meat, pasta, etc. I asked her if he was ready for a t-bone steak yet (jokingly) and she just laughed. She also wasn't too worried about Scotty's lack of movement; she said the bigger babies tend to just sit there since it takes a lot of effort to hoist their enormous little booties in the air and crawl.
So, that was reassuring.
And all is well that ends well. In typical Scotty form, he refused the bottle all day on Friday (yet strangely, will drink from my water bottle...such a silly [and wet] kid) and today, nommed on over 28 ounces of food. And that is in addition to eating his porridge (plus fruit and yogurt) for breakfast, 1/2 an avocado, sweet potatoes, yogurt with mango and flaxseed, and spinach with apples for lunch. Not to mention his cantalope and cottage cheese snack.
This kid is an eater. I'm starting to worry about my grocery bill in about 15 years. Hell, I'm worried about my grocery bill now.
And he wanted to let everyone see him in all his glory, so check out the photos below.
(actually, his onesie was soaked with water since he likes to drink out of my water bottle, hence the nakedness.)