Last year, just after her birthday,

the endocrinologist told Ivy that in shoes she was 100cm

but the girl was unimpressed.

She came home, stomped around for a while and then said;

‘If it’s in shoes, it doesn’t count’.

Indeed, when she saw the paed and he measured her up as 99.6 cm

she wasn’t surprised

or disappointed.

I guess she was right.

Unless it was a true hundred it meant very little to her

but

on Friday

just before we escaped into a weekend of leave from the hospital

our favourite boy-nurse measured her up again

where she obtained the ‘officially official shoeless‘ height off 100.5cm.

Cheers and high fives aside

the girl was very pleased with herself

and as promised we partied;

with balloons and bubbles

and a metre of  cake

because that’s a lot of growth in a year

and because that hundred centimetres was a long time coming

and because some things should be celebrated

and

well,

that’s as good an excuse as any to have cake.