Huskaroo

I may be a little neurotic, it's true. I think too much about too many things, worry when I really sometimes shouldn't, and at times have to work hard to let things go.

I'm finding myself striving for detachment more and more in my life. And I'm getting better at it. But.

But, I still obsess about certain things at certain times.

Right now I'm concerned about my middle daughter's weight. I don't want to be concerned about my middle daughter's weight. I want to blow it off. She is a big girl, she has always been big. Sometimes she bulks out before she sprouts up. But.

But, I find myself monitoring what she is eating. I find myself really analyzing how her clothes or fitting her, or not.

I have to contain myself when she skips happily around the house in her leotard before gymnastics, her full butt cheeks peeking out from the bottom seams, her strong thighs much stouter than seems normal to me.

Is she fat, or just growing? Is she but another childhood obesity statistic, or is this simply her body type?

Is it just her body type?

This is her at birth. I'm not sure if you can read that scale, but it's displaying 46.70; convert that into pounds and you're looking at a 10 lb 3 oz baby. That was my youngest daughter's weight at 7 weeks. 

She came out big, and has remained big. She has consistently stayed in the 95 percentile for both height and weight. It's good to be proportional, but are those percentiles too forgiving?

I try to feed my kids healthy food, I do, but I'm a lazy cook. I long to present only home-cooked organic-based meals, but that is the exception to the rule. More often dinner is quickly thrown together. You know, edamame, sliced apples, and a bagel. Or eggs and toast, or quesadillas and carrots. You get the picture. Not junk food, but not optimal meals either. Could this be it?

Or maybe she needs more exercise? But she runs in the mornings before school, takes both a yoga class and a gymnastics class weekly, and loves to play outside with the neighbors.

She spent the entire 2.5 hours of yesterday's outing to a local pool swimming with her older sister and Jacquie's girl. They were blue-lipped and wrinkled when we finally forced them out.

So why am I so worried? Am I worried about diabetes? Or about her getting hassled at school?  Am I simply too caught up in the whole body image game? Am I being overly critical? Or maybe it is that her build is so different than mine. Am I freaked out because I've never had a round bottom like hers, or those meaty thighs, or those small feet with short toes? Do I worry she's a huskaroo only because she seems foreign to me?

It's an interesting question, one I need to think on. Thankfully, the bottom line is she's a happy, healthy, and beautiful child. And none of my internal strife can touch that.