Growing Tall

This is the resident 11-month old, Liam. He's just starting to get really good at pulling up on nearby stationary objects: walls, gates, furniture, legs of family members...

Here he is standing next to the "growth chart", which consists of one piece of screen moulding screwed into the wall, per child.

Here's the shot at a distance--that's dinner in the crockpot. I heart my crockpot.

When we bought our current home, the plan was to stay in it for about five years (pardon me while I take a moment to laugh at the folly of youth) and then move to a bigger house. With that in mind, we wanted to chart our child(ren)'s growth on something that could be packed up and moved when the time came--something easier to move than say, a door or an entire wall.

Screen moulding was the answer. We screwed a length of it to the wall and added new strips as the babies arrived.

Each child's strip is labeled with their name. Patrick wanted to include marks for us parents as well, but those are penciled directly onto the wall. I guess he doesn't care if those move with us or not.

I married a really tall guy.

Here's a closer shot. We write their age above the height-mark, and their height in inches just below the mark. Note that at 12 years old, Holly is mere inches shorter than me! She makes a point of reminding me of this at various times throughout the day every day. She isn't happy about the fact that her younger sister is gaining on her (and me!) rapidly. She is already taller at 9 years than Holly was at 10. In three years, I expect I will be the shortest female in the house. Maybe two.

Height is documented twice per year, once on their birthday and again on their half-birthday. This does not stop them from "unofficially" measuring themselves whenever the mood strikes, however. Our 5-year old sometimes asks to be measured after finishing a glass of milk, for instance, just to see if drinking milk really does make you grow.

This one will probably wind up taller than the lot of us.