Growing like a weed

Biscuit had his 6-year-old checkup back in mid-December, and I was surprised at how much he had grown. I mean, I had seen it in his clothes, but the numbers made it even more real.

I actually slapped him in the head one day recently. When Biscuit walks up beside me, I usually just swing my arm out and rest my hand on his head. Well, I did that recently and smack, right in the forehead.

"Moooom!" Biscuit said. "Why did you smack me?!"

"I didn't mean to," I said, "but you just keep growing!"

So I've had to adjust my reach when he's around.

Since Biscuit was born several weeks early, he was kinda small when he was born. He was in the 5th percentile, which means that 95% of babies his age were bigger than him. By the time he was 2 years old, he had moved up to the 10th percentile. And he's been there ever since.

Until this year, that is.

The nurse took his height and weight then looked at her laptop.

"Wow," she said, smiling at Biscuit. "You got BIG this year!"

"Yeah," Biscuit said. "My Mom keeps telling me to quit growing, but I just keep telling her, 'Mom, I can't quit growing.'"

Biscuit jumped up to the 50th percentile for weight and the 55th for height. So that means that after several years of being smaller than the other kids his age, he's right in the middle of them. He's perfectly average.

But along with that growth spurt, we've had to buy a bunch of new clothes!

Just after school started, I took advantage of a good sale to get Biscuit enough jeans to last a full school week. And now ... now he has outgrown them! Between September and January, his jeans went from almost needing to be rolled up to not meeting the tops of his shoes!

So we had to move from the toddler side of clothing to the big boys side. And you know what the difference is? $8 T-shirts suddenly turn into $12 T-shirts!

We got the clothes taken care of, then last weekend, I realized that Biscuit's toes were quickly reaching the ends of his shoes. So he and I went shoe shopping yesterday evening.

I had him try on the next size up from what he was wearing, and they were too small. And that was the last size in the little boy section. So just like with clothes, we had to round the corner and look to the big-boy stuff.

Know what the difference is between little boy shoes and big boy shoes? About $15!

Of course, I don't mind paying for good shoes. You can get cheap clothes, but well-made shoes are important.

Biscuit still likes character shoes, but once you cross over to big-boy sizes, there aren't a lot of those to choose from. He didn't like any of the ones they had.

I was scanning the aisle, trying to take in all the choices when I heard Biscuit say, "Hey! I like these!"

So I went to see what he had chosen. Surprisingly, they were non-character, well-made, reasonably priced shoes!

"Mom, I'm not sure why, but these shoes make me think about ninjas," Biscuit said.

I'm not sure why they made him think about ninjas, either, but hey, if that helped him feel good about his new shoes, that's fine by me.