2009.02.28

He's sleeping (yay!) on the couch. We struggle with naps on weekends, so this is cool.

Grandpa says when he (Grandpa) came downstairs this morning, Henry spontaneously ran to him and gave him a hug - something he's not done before.

Henry also pooped in the potty last night, which was cause for great celebration (and chocolate, the best bribe).

I weighed and measured him last night; he's 34 inches tall and weighs 24 pounds. He's about the size of a two-year-old rather than a three-year-old, BUT his BMI is at the 11th percentile for kids his age, so that's great (anything between the 5th and 85th percentile is considered healthy.)

The somewhat scary thing is, he's dead average for an Ethiopian child, based on Ethiopian growth charts. However, the World Health Organization publishes a chart of child growth standards, based on how children world-wide grow if given clean water and proper nutrition, and he's very under height and weight on that chart.

Basically, he's a little guy and probably always will be. His birth parents may have been small; he certainly was affected by lack of clean water and food for his first year and a half of life (The woman who originally found him fed him sugar water). But he is growing steadily and proportionally now, and for that I'm grateful.