What's in the food?

I have reached yet another major milestone…my eldest son is now noticeably taller than me. It is only a matter of time before my second son will follow suit. At 13.5 years old, Daniel has yet to reach a major growth spurt, nevertheless he is slowly towering me by day. He now weighs 69kg (hard to believe eh?), way heavier than me. Once he reached puberty, I think will look more like a sister to him than a mother(in size that is). He now fits into my husband’s size whilst I could share apparels with my second son. Harris now weighs 40kg, close enough to my weight. I find this rather hard to believe…what have I been feeding these kids?

For mothers who don’t have boys, you wouldn’t believe how much food they could consume. Despite being extra cautious with what I feed them (and they being picky eaters), they still gained so much weight and grow so big. Harris is far bigger than kids his age. You wouldn’t have guessed that he is not even 9 yet, he looks more like an 11 year old boy. Ariana is also tall for her age even though this little princess eats scarcely. Sophie is my only child that will most likely inherit my trait – petite in size and will most likely grow up to wear size 4 shoes like me. At 8months old, she’s quite small for her age and still wears shoes newborn size.

Yup, I wear size 4 shoes, the smallest you could find on the shelves. When I was in the States, I shop for shoes in the children department - nothing in the adult section fits me. When I was shopping for my wedding ring (also in the States), the salesgirls was so surprised to see my tiny fingers that she had to call her colleagues to join her in ‘admiring’ my small fingers. Perhaps they have never seen fingers so small on an adult. My ring had to be altered to fit my small fingers. Now that I think about it, it made me feel like a circus freak. But after four kids, trust me, they are not that small anymore…

How could a petite person like me have such tall and big offsprings? Perhaps I have a recessive tall and big gene in my chromosomes, or is it the food? All 4 of my brothers are really tall; in fact they are much taller than my parents and even my husband. My second brother and my immediate younger brother are easily 6-footers. My sister and I on the other hand are really short. We are both barely 5’ tall. I don’t think that they got it from my husband’s side either - they are all only average height people. So it must be me – both in my genes and what I feed them at home.

I say it’s hard to control our kids’ weight even when we cook the healthiest food at home… The so-called healthy food stuff like fresh milk, cheese (which are coincidently my children's favourite) and what not are actually major culprit. I wonder what’s in the food being served at school canteens...