All this to introduce the question--how big is Althea? How much do you expect she will weigh when you bring her home in June? Many of you have asked us this question, with the comment that she looks really quite big in her photos. Apparently, she is not in fact very big at all. The measurements we do have come from January, the same month in which the photos were taken. At that point she was 4-1/2 months old. Her weight at that time was 6.0 kg (a bit over 13 pounds) and only 58.7 cm (or about 23 inches.
I have found height and weight charts for Southern Chinese girls (isn't the internet amazing?). Acccording to these charts, at 4 months, Althea was average in weight, but actually quite below average in height.
Now, using these charts, and assuming that Althea has continued to grow at the same rate (perhaps a silly assumption, but it's all we have), our prediction is that, at age 9-1/2 months, when we will be picking her up from China, she will be approximately 16.5 pounds and a bit over 25 inches tall. Skipping to the key question so many of you have asked, what size clothes will she wear? Given these estimates, we predict she will be in 6-9 month clothes when we go to get her, but expect her to move rapidly into the 9-12 month range (especially once daddy starts pumping her full of protein).
