1 Year Old

By one definition, Riley is no longer a baby now that she is 12 months old. The other definition says that she isn't a toddler until she can walk on her own. I'm going with the latter. This last year has gone by so quickly, and I'm not quite ready to let her give up her baby status.

And now, for the moment we've all been waiting for...

Riley had her pediatrician appointment yesterday. At 12 months Riley is 29 inches long and weighs 17 pounds, 2.5 ounces. Not even close to the required 20 pounds. But we all knew that was coming. These measurements put her in the 20th percentile for weight (which is a little bit of a jump from 9 months) and 60th for length. The doctor estimates that if she maintains this rate of growth, she'll weigh 20 pounds in a month and a half. After the video Suzanne shared [see it here], I'm not in a huge rush to turn her around in her car seat. But I may have changed my mind by the time mid-May rolls around.

I did learn yesterday that there is a limit on how long you should keep your child rear-facing. Apperantly it's against the law to have them rear-facing if they weigh 35 pounds or more. The rule itself is not a shock to me, but the fact that there is a need for it. I'm trying to picture how tall a 35 pound kid would be. Wouldn't their legs be folded most of the way up the back seat? If your child is in the vicinity of 35 pounds, please leave a comment here so I can have a more realistic picture in my head. Because I'll bet it will be a funny one.

Oh, hold on. My curiousity got the better of me. I did a Google Image search for car seat 35 pounds rear-facing. And since the internet is largely comprised of people who take things to extremes, I was able to find a couple of photos of big kids who are still being forced to sit in rear-facing car seats.

This girl is "3.5 years old, 32+ pounds". [Via car-safety.org] This is in a minivan and the photo was obviously taken while the back door was open. I'm just wondering how comfortable that could possibly be once the door is closed? Can you imagine that family taking road-trips?