Little Dude

Before Matthew was born, we had trouble choosing a name for him. In fact, we didn't decide for sure what to call him until we were getting everything in order to check out of the hospital and needed something to fill in the blanks on his form. (Daniel however, was sure he was Matthew for about three months before he was born. Apparently we should have listened.) Due to the lack of a name, my youngest sister started calling him Little Dude. We all picked it up, even me. Three weeks before the birth when we ordered brother shirts for all our boys, we put Little Dude on Matthew's shirt because we had nothing else to put. And even now, at fifteen months, he still gets called Little Dude.

After he was born, the name stuck but got treated with a bit more irony. After all, he was over 8 pounds at birth and seemed to be following in the big ol' footsteps of his older brothers. But over his first year, as his growth evened out to reflect his true stature, it became obvious that he definitely is the "little" brother. At his one year appointment our doctor checked his measurements two or three times to make sure they were correct. Being accustomed to the size of my two older boys, he finally remarked with a bit of surprise that Matthew isn't going to be all that tall. My dry response? "Well, I am his mother." And I'm not quite 5' 3". Our doc is great though. He just laughed and teased me about diluting the gene pool.

Today was another confirmation of the size difference between Matthew and the other boys. Nathan had his five year check up and Matthew had his fifteen month. Nathan is in the 95th percentile for both height and weight. Matthew, on the other hand, is in the 15th percentile for weight and he isn't even on the chart for height. I mean way below the 3rd percentile.

It looks like "Little Dude" is a more appropriate nickname than we ever thought it would be. Poor kid. He is always going to be the younger, shorter brother. At least he has a giant sized personality to make up for it!

The boys in their brother shirts (May 2007)