A Little Taller

We measure my son and daughter's height every year on their birthday, marring a wall with a line and the date so that years from now, we can look back at how they grew over the years.   My daughter has always been a little shorter than her brother at the same age marks but we figured that was about par since children grow so quickly.  

The children have always been normal on the growth charts every year and they seem to be normal in nearly every way.   So that surprised me when my son mentioned something about being the shortest in his class.   

He seemed to be not that upset about it, but you could tell he wished he were a little taller.   I talked to him at one point about it and how he was a fourth year and that he would likely be not as tall as his classmates who were fifth and sixth years.   He knew that, but he also said he was the shortest fourth year boy as well.   again, not with any real anger behind it, just sort of a wistfulness that he might be taller. 

Today, as we were packing to go visit Nana and Papa for the spring break week (and only Nana and Papa, staying in their house with them is enough for us so that we can remain hopefully COVID-19 safe.)  I looked at my son, who was wearing shorts due to some warm weather that had come through.   I noticed his knees looked more pronounced and his legs looked longer. 

I asked him if he thought he had grown recently.   He was working on a slider puzzle that went up to twenty-eight and was focused, but he heard me and nodded, saying, "a little, maybe."  I said he might be in a growth spurt and might not be the shortest in his class soon.   "That would be nice," he replied.  

The Big Boy Tiny Girl IT TICKLES! Trauma:  We got COVID-19 PCR tests today in preparation for our trip.   There was a small fuzzy thing we each put in our nose and swabbed  for five seconds per nostril.   My daughter has been traumatized by the deep sinus probing tests in the past two weeks and was already in near terror form.   My husband got to my son first and the noises my son made did not make my job any easier.   My daughter was terrified of ten seconds of tickle.  When I finally got her calmed down enough to do the swab, she said, "was that it?"