Measuring Progress, Literally

Everyone who sees Samantha after a break of a month or so remarks how tall she's gotten.  Like, after just a month!  But I often think those growth spurts really do happen like that (and trust me, I'm more than happy to blame any bad behavior she's had during that time on just such a spurt...LOL), especially when it's well-documented on the wall. 

When Samantha and I got home from the tea party photo shoot on Friday evening, she asked Steve to take her measurements again.  He started documenting them just a few months ago, with the most recent one taken in late May.  We were both completely shocked to see that she'd grown an inch in that short time!  I have to think that there must have been a mistake.  I don't know.  But every time I look at my little girl, I see how long her legs are, how her little Buddha-belly has suddenly begun to slim out, I see the first shadowy images of the leggy teenager she's sure to become.

Forgive the image quality...

I'm 6' tall. Steve is 5'10". The average height for an adult female with Down syndrome is about 4 1/2 feet. When she was a baby and I did those BabyCenter calculations to determine how tall she'll be, based on her height at the time factored in with the height of myself and Steve, it repeatedly turned out a response of 5'4". I haven't done those calculations in a very long time, but I'm thinking she may manage to push at least that when she's done growing. To be perfectly honest, I really don't care how tall she is, but I find it interesting anyway to see how parental height may influence the extra chromosome.

I always had to laugh when people not in the Ds community would see us and say, "Oh, I'm sure she's going to be really tall, like her mommy!" Depending on who they were, I'd occasionally correct them with a quick science lesson in genetics, but usually I'd just say, "Hmmm...maybe."

Eh, who knows?