Lime (remember him?) hit the 2.5 year mark this week, and in honor of that occasion had a check-up. Lemon has never minded going to see the regular pediatrician, presumably because it is not nearly as bad or as time-consuming as a visit to the CF clinic. Lacking this frame of reference, and being 2.5, Lime acted as though he were being kidnapped. A small bribe in the form of M&M's went a long way towards soothing his troubled soul, though. At the check-up we learned that he is still, in the immortal words of his first pediatrician, "tiny but vigorous." However, he is incrementally less tiny than he use to be. Whereas at his second birthday he was in the 4th percentile, he has now jumped all the way up to the (wait for it) 11th. So, still fairly minuscule but now within the magic range of 5th-95th percentile that pediatricians find reassuring.
The only minor problem is that to get him there, I've been letting him drink whole milk all night long, to the tune of a pint a night. Well, it turns out that's not so advisable from a dental perspective. I switched him over to water, which he's taken to admirably well, except of course for the part where now he's waking up at 4 a.m. again to have pre-breakfast. One imagines there must be a point at which he will be able to consume enough calories during the day to sustain himself through the night, yes?
And then there is Lemon. I hardly want to write about it for fear of tempting the fates, but the purpose of the blog is to report the news, so here it is. Lemon is eating stuff. All kinds of stuff. Sometimes, even "a lot" of stuff. Double-digit numbers of bites of the same food. Randomly trying new things. Pasta with red sauce and Parmesan cheese ("This is really delicious, Ma."). Hamburger with ketchup. Fried cheese curds. Watermelon. Weird hummus that was not exactly the same as the hummus that we have at home. Chips with seeds in them. Crackers with cheese spread on them. It's honestly shocking.
So, what's going on? Probably several things. He's continuing to get older, and to become more aware of what his peers are up to. We've been working hard at food school, and he's acquired new skills and confidence when it comes to eating. He's been healthy for something like 3 consecutive weeks, which is the longest illness-free period we've had since school started, so maybe he's finally feeling truly 100%. I have one other idea, I have no idea how valid it is, but thanks to ursodiol, his liver is functioning normally for the first time in his life. A very common symptom of liver inflammation is: poor appetite. I do wonder if for a long time he has just not been feeling like eating because of that inflammation, and now that it's resolved, it's contributing to this new interest in actually eating things. As with so many other things about treating CF, we will never know for sure. In this particular case, though, I'm willing to live with some uncertainty. 
