How fat is your baby?

Belle got baptized today.  It was a great ceremony.  Now a days they do the baptisms, communions, and confirmations in front of the whole congregation and they are treated as a welcoming into the Catholic church.  I love the sentimental feeling that goes with big milestones like this (in addition to seeing grandmothers tear up, that was so touching!).  It really does put me in a good mood, after all of the chaos of getting to that point.  But that is not what this post is about. 

This post is about babies and their weight.  I started thinking about this when I found out the other child being baptized was only three months old and had already hit 18 POUNDS!  My first response to this was, "WHOA!  Um, time for a double take?"  Then I began to consider other babies.  Many of my friends have had kids recently, so its only normal that I would compare and contrast how everyone's kiddos are doing.  Something that comes up alot, it seems, is weight.  For the two mommies that had children last summer, they seem to have kids that have streamed along the average weight for babies.  At least, I haven't heard any different from that.  Then there's the kiddos that came after mine.  Two of these babies are a good size for their age.  Certainly, they are in the upper percentiles for weight averages.  One of these kids is actually 2 months old and 15 pounds. 

It gets me thinking, "What are you feeding these children and where can I get some?"  You see, my little girl is on the very low end of the growth charts.  Granted, we had issues feeding her in the beginning and her growing stalled out, but now she is starting to catch up.  To give you and idea of how my girlie has been growing, when she was 3 months old, she weighed just over 10 pounds as opposed to 18!  She is definitley petite.  But really, I wanna know how on earth there can be such a large difference in weight.  I couldn't help but think that little Luca (that was the boy's name) was gonna start walking here in a week or two....shoot.  Even my sister's daughter wasn't 18 pounds until she was almost one! 

So, if anyone can give me a rational explanation for this to help me get my head around this drastic difference in weight, it would be greatly appreciated.  Then maybe I could stop wondering if I should just start feeding Belle cake to fatten her up a bit :).