It is very interesting, watching L get bigger. I don’t have any point of reference for the whys and whens that are a part of every baby’s development and personality. With M, it didn’t take much to refer back to Mr. A or my own childhoods/personalities to understand what was making her tick. With L, we find new surprises every day.
Examples:
-The incredible shrinking girl. Actually, L isn’t shrinking, but she is dropping consistantly lower on the height-weight chart. She came home at about the 50th percentile for height and weight. In the past year, she has dropped to the 15th percentile for both height and weight. I keep mentioning it to people to see if anyone thinks I should be alarmed, but my friends and family are decidedly unimpressed. She eats all day long, so at least I don’t have to be afraid she is malnourished. She may just have a slightly delayed growth spurt. Or maybe she just comes from slightly smaller people.
-The lump on her head. L has a lump right above her forehead, at the front of where her softspot was. I suspect she has a mild version of metopic synostosis, but so far any medical professional I have mentioned it to (several when we first came home) just shrug and are unimpressed by her lump. Fortunately, her hair is beginning to grow low enough to hide the lump, but it is doubtful she will want to part her hair in the middle when she is older.
-Teeth. L *still* doesn’t have all her baby teeth. She is 26 and a half months old and she is still missing her bottom incisors. A teething 2 year +2 month old is no fun at all. No sign of any 2 year molars coming in either. And also all her teeth came in backwards order: tops first, then bottoms. And they bottom middle two are at a 90 degree angle from each other. They popped through the gums that way. At this rate, L will be lucky if she can get braces on by the time she is 20.
-L loves shoes. Anyones shoes are good, but plastic princess high heels are preferred. M never had the slightest interest in dress up or high heels and I mostly wear tennis shoes or flip flops, so we don’t own any. When we go to other people’s houses, L can usually be found prancing around in sparkly cinderella shoes.
-L loves purses and bags. And makeup too. I don’t even carry a bag, but L turns every single bag she finds into a purse. I don’t even know where she has seen a purse. Ditto for makeup. I wear lipstick like 2x per year. A friend’s kid had some play makeup the other day and L was a girl obsessed. (As was M, but she is at least old enough to know what it is.)
-The color pink. It seems to be L’s favorite color despite the effort I have made to make sure very few of our toys are pink. When asked to identify a color, pink is the one she says correctly most often. If asked to select one item out of several different colors, she usually picks pink.
I am refusing to acknowlege the three directly above may indict that L is headed toward girly-girldom. I admit it does make me a tad nervous though. This may be a huge sign that nature is trumping nurture. Yipes.
L sounds delightful! This definitely is one of the joys of adoption for me: observing my DD’s unique personality and strengths emerge and develop as she gets older. In our family, DH and I are a couple of geeky bookworms. DD is an extroverted, athletic, perpetually cheerful dynamo. I’m just grateful that I worked out enuf of my shit before adoption that I can (usually!) appreciate the wonderful gift of DD’s unique self rather than spending too much time wishing she were different. I’ve got a girly girl for sure…and I’m a three pairs of shoes, t-shirts, shorts or jeans kinda mom.
Hi, It’s interesting as my DD is nearly 3 ( from China) and she nearly always gravitates toward boy toys! She has no interest in dolls, and I was the biggest girly girl when I was young. She loves soft toys, but really loves trains, blocks, jigsaws, trucks, cars etc. I have always bought her some girly toys, but also buy her boyish ones. Same for DVD’s. She loves Dora, but equally adores Bob the builder and fireman Sam! It is actually amazing to watch her personality and interests emerge. I think you can encourage stuff to a point, but they very much have their own natural inclinations. I even see this with some of my friends bio kids. They often have different personlities and interests to their parents!
My son did the same thing with weight/height–always weighed in 50-75% as a baby, then down to 20ish sometime after a year. (Hubs and I are both smaller people.) He was also obsessed with pink. Everytime I made play-dough, it had to be pink!! I just went with it and it disappeared later…thank heavens…not so socially acceptable for a boy.
FYI, my dentist gave me a brochure with the average order of the teeth, and some of the sets are tops first, bottoms second, but others are the reverse.
Hi, I have been a longtime lurker. Both of your girls are absolutely lovely!
I also wanted to mention that it is possible L is missing her incisors genetically — both my dad and I are genetically missing our top lateral incisors. Eventually I had braces which made enough room for bridges (we’re talking 25 years ago – before the advent of implants).
my four year old was hopelessly girly. She loved pink and still loves dress up and purses and makeup. We, too, were careful, and she and her twin brother share toys. She also loves dolls. She would rather have a doll than almost anything else, and her brother only wants sticks and balls and swords. I swear we kept everything as gender neutral as possible. It just happens, sometimes.
I always love the honesty in your posts and I always seem to find something that hits home….
I also have one bio and one adopted daughter and I’ve had the same type of feelings…. Most of big daughter’s traits can be traced to me, my husband, or someone else in our family…. but with little daughter, I spend hours wondering where she picked up certain traits/preferences and am certain that nature must be trumping nurture…..
and it’s wonderful (keeps me guessing – but wonderful all the same).
When L gets bigger and starts asking about her bio parents, point out all these traits. When my two girls wonder about their Chinese parents, I tell them to look in the mirror and I point out things that are genetically linked. Also – this year in Science, my older girl had to do the dreaded family genetics paper… ”go home and ask your parents and siblings if they can — curl their tongue, free or attached ear lobes, etc.” I told E that based on what she could do, she’d have some ideas about what her bioparents could do too.
And ‘girliness’ is definately genetic! I have a tomboy and a girly-girl too.
You might be okay with the girly girl thing — my dd wrestles and boxes in pink plastic high heels. And I’m another one who just loves watching the surprise . . .
My friend’s daughters (bio) are both slow growers. They started out as 8+ pound babies, but now my daughter (born 6 weeks after her second) weighs 22 pounds, and hers weighs 16. Her daughter outweighed mine at birth. And both are perfectly healthy!
And the lump on the head? People don’t part their hair down the middle much anymore anyway.
as for your L’s height, I hope you feed her(and your bio daughter) more whole fat foods. Especially whole milk, yogurt(w/ cream top), liver and egg yolk.
These foods provide a good source of natural choline, vitamin a/d , and other fat soluble vitamins. Notice that they’re all from animal sources. This plus a healthy amount of green leafy veggies are an unbeatable combo for height growth.