First Height Mark

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At every health checkup for Mara the nurse measures her head-to-toe to keep track of her height. It's always a challenge to get her stretched out on the table the right way because she will arch and stretch to look at what you're doing. The nurses have their tricks: measuring from some midpoint to foot first, then the upper side and adding up the two. Even so, there's need for a second measurement about once every three visits.

Once Mara could turn and go on her fours, the game turned even harder. I can't even imagine how they are going to convince her in a few weeks at the next checkup.

In the meantime, we decided to try it ourselves on the vertical axis. Our friend Eileen gave us this very cute growth chart for Mara (thank you!!) and we hung it on a wall in the center of our house.

Mara's enthusiasm when it comes to markers has some limits, but those limits are far beyond the horizon. Really, she turns into an instant grabbing machine on sight of any marker-looking item. She has not discovered yet the miraculous powers they carry, of actually leaving marks on things, but she seems to feel it nonetheless and holds on tight.

You can imagine how it went: we brought the markers, then wrestled her for a long time trying to draw that mark on top of her head.

Oh, daddy, do you really want these? Oh are they important? How much do you want them? I think I'll hold on to them for a while. Yeah I see the desire in your eyes.
I guess you can have one marker.... psych! I'm still holding on and gonna do a victory dance for it.

Aaaand this is how you draw a mark over the baby's head. Note the extra wide stance that Mara is in, which ensured that we brought the measurement down to the 4th percentile for a baby that's usually around the 90th. It's okay, we'll take whatever victory we can get.

We tried asking her to stand up straighter, in the hope of an accurate measurement, and here's what the outcome was:


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