Dan is almost six foot six. I'm not that tall now at five foot nine and a half, but when I was young I ended up in the middle back row of every single one of my elementary school class photos. There were only three boys in my eighth grade class who were taller than me.
There's a pretty good chance that Penelope is going to be tall.
I wish I could tell her that being a tall girl is simply wonderful throughout all stages of life, but I actually hated it for a majority of my childhood. When I was little I could never share clothes with my friends because I was always a size or two bigger than them, and I wasn't that chubby of a kid, just bigger. Into middle school, my shopping experiences would begin and end with "do those come in Longs?" (Usually they didn't back then). And it was emotionally tough being taller than most of the boys. No girl likes being bigger than the boys her same age. No one likes being called names either.
To my dearest baby girl... I know I won't be able to protect you from all the self-esteem threats that culture and other kids will throw at you during adolescence. But my hope for you is that if you grow heights beyond your peers, you will stand tall gracefully and with pride. That you will never resent your height like I did. That you will wear high heels to dances. That you will never slouch. That you will know that you are beautiful, always.
Charting Growth: Our Ruler Project
I'm not a DIY blogger because I don't do enough DIY to make a blog of it... But when I do do DIY I am pretty serious about it. (Ask Daniel about the time the baby ribbons took over our kitchen...)So anyway, Dan and I made this growth chart ruler for Penny for Christmas "to watch our family grow" over the years. This project was really important to me because the only growth chart rulers I could find (aside from them being expensive and not looking exactly how I wanted ours to look) were only six feet tall. Ummm hello... Daddy had to be on the growth chart too! And what if our kids grow taller than six foot? So ours goes to seven feet.
Anyway, if you wanna make one yourself, you'll need:
- About three days
- A place for smelly stuff to air out / dry
- The wood, cut to the size and length you want it
- Sander / sandpaper
- Stain of your choice
- A vision of what you want your lines to look like
- Measuring tape
- Pencil (to lightly sketch everything out)
- Paper printouts of the numbers in the font and size that you want
- A steady hand
- Ballpoint pen (for tracing/etching the numbers)
- Black paint pen (for the actual lines and numbers)
- Wood finish / sealant
In that order.
If you want step by step instructions or tips, I suggest you do a web search and you'll find some real DIY bloggers who spend a lot of time writing these things up. I wouldn't say it was difficult, just meticulous and time consuming.
Julie's Taking Pictures? Weird.
We will take photos of Penny and all our potential future children in front of this ruler at the start of every year. Hopefully we will get some good ones over the years! Here are our "Growing Family" photos for 2013:
Make sure to check out the other blogs while you're at it, there are some real gems!
