Hoop Dreams

I couldn't quite figure out what was wrong. Something was different, but what? I looked closely at my three month old daughter lying there on the bed. She burbled happily at me and luxuriated in her freshly changed diaper. Diaper. That was it it! Cher's diapers don't have zebra pictures on them...

I had unwittingly put my 2 1/2 year old's diaper on my three month old but the freaky thing was, it fit perfectly! Cher is turning out to be massive. At three months, she is quickly approaching the weight of my toddler. We enjoyed only one week of dressing her in 0-3 month clothes. The next two months we squeezed her into the 3-6 month onesies, and now I find myself having to dig out the box of 6-12 month attire to accommodate her massive proportions. I'm expecting her voice to change any day now.

After my first baby turned out to be a wispy waif, I secretly hoped my future children would have a bit more substance to them. Not that I don't think my elven child is beautiful, but when she gets sick and loses a few pounds it looks likes I'm running a concentration camp. Pixie never had an ounce of extra fat and you can count each and every one of her tiny bones through her thin skin. I've been known to break fragile objects and so she worries me.

This second baby knew what she had to do. At her two month appointment the growth chart showed Cher's height marked way off the top of the graph. She'll be dunking on her dad in a few more years. I'm a mere 5'4" so when my massive child is clinging to my neck it is sometimes confusing to passerbys who is holding who. Once when I was holding her in my lap feeding her a bottle, my husband remarked that we looked like the Pieta sculpture. She's that big. As the mother who worried about her first child wasting away to dust, her size is exhilarating.

My husband is most excited about the prospect of Cher becoming a professional athlete. She's got WNBA written all over her. Admittedly, this is partially because her head is the size of a basketball and she's currently partial to women, but the height thing can't hurt either. Like most fathers, Spike is obsessed with the idea that one of our children strike it rich and support us through our golden years. Thanks to our long infant, his excitement over this idea has reached fever pitch.

Cher is making development leaps as well. She was happily weaned from breast feeding at two months and has been rolling since then as well. I refuse to accept that a two month old can roll and so continue to put her on beds and couches unattended. Every time she has rolled off I've called it a fluke but I don't know how many more bumps that big head of hers can take. I've got to be more careful to take care of our cash cow. Spike would never forgive me if I damaged his new retirement plan.