Bye bye, kak!

Sammy had her 18-month check up today. She loved climbing on the chairs in the waiting room. Loved the fish tank. Hated the nurse, the scale, and the examination table. At her 15-month checkup, she cried in my lap and signed for “music” while we waited for the doctor. Today, she kept saying “door? door? door?” as in “Hey that’s the door out of this place. Why don’t we USE IT?”

The bad news is that Sammy has an infection in both ears (explains her recent irritability) and we now face 10 days of squirting pink antibiotic goop into her mouth. The good news is that Sam’s physical growth is fine: 21 lbs 4 oz which puts her in the 10th percentile for kids her age. (That’s double the usual 5th percentile!) 31 inches tall, or 25th percentile for height. The doctor also repeated that Sammy’s verbal skills are amazingly advanced. The 18-month questionnaire I had to fill out in the waiting room asked if my toddler uses 4-6 words. At last count, Sam’s vocabulary is about 100 words. Now, some of these words are decipherable only to Mama and Daddy, such as “weesh” (swings) and “la la” (lullabies), but still!

As the doctor stood up to leave, Sammy started saying “bye bye!” I said “Bye bye, Doctor.” Then just after Dr. K. exited the room, Sammy said “Bye bye, kak!”

I looked at her quizzically.

“Bye bye, kak!”

“Oh, you mean bye bye Doctor?”

“Ya! Bye bye, kak!”

Another huge difference from her last checkup was that Sammy insisted upon leaving the exam room on her own two feet. She ran down the hall, stopping to peek in other exam rooms, still exclaiming “Bye bye, kak!”

And another Sammy word is born.