doctor doctor

Well, we were supposed to leave for St. Louis today for Thanksgiving, right after Charli's 1 year doctor's appointment. I was hoping Charli would sleep on the plane, since I knew she was going to have to get a few shots and I was going to give her some Tylenol. Unfortunately, our flight was cancelled and we're not leaving until tomorrow, so here we still are. Perhaps you are wondering what this picture has to do with the doctor's office? Well, if you look carefully, you can see a bandaid where she got some shots.

Charli is 29 1/4 inches long (50th percentile) and 18 lbs. 9 oz. (15th percentile). That's 5 percentile points higher than last time! She's catching up! Yay! Although, as I have been telling anyone, I have actually come to terms with Charli's weight. I no longer think she's starving at all. I have finally internalized what everyone has been telling me, and I think Charli is perfectly healthy and happy eating however much she feels like eating. It's very liberating.

We are supposed to stop with the formula and start with the whole milk now, so we'll be mixing our formula with milk until it's gone. This could be very liberating, too. We are also supposed to be weaning Charli off the bottle, so we're going to stop with the morning bottle and no bottles during the day - only the sippy cups and straws and whatever else we can get her to drink from. I think we'll wait a bit to get rid of the bedtime bottle. It's just so convenient for helping her get to bed... We are also supposed to stop feeding her if she wakes up in the middle of the night. Charli can have honey now, having passed a year. Dr. Rostek said she can pretty much have anything now, except maybe we could hold off on peanut products - but we've already given her peanut butter, so I'm not too worried about that.

Charli had to get 4 shots today, and we brought the pacifier, which she has just started really liking. I forgot to give her the tylenol before the shots, so she had it right after which was a nice distraction. The pacifier worked really well - she had two shots before she quite figured out that she had to stop sucking on it in order to cry. It's so sad when she gets all those shots. They really just stick the needles in her, which I guess is how they do it to adults too, but it just looks so much more brutal when the needle looks half as big as your limb. She got her first half of a flu vaccination and has to go back for the other half in a month, because the first flu shot they give in 2 doses. She also has to have a blood test, which they apparently take out of a vein, so I imagine that will be very traumatic. We tried to go get it over and done with, but they couldn't do it before the holiday because the processing wouldn't get done in time, so we're going to have to go back for that, too.

Dr. Rostek said Charli was very social, which to Brian meant she got an A. I was able to say she did everything else he asked about, so I also think she got an A. Plus, her weight percentile went up. So, in spite of the fact that she could only get 1/2 a flu shot, we couldn't get her blood test at all, and our flight to St. Louis was cancelled, it was still a pretty successful day. :)