All About the Kids

Ben
Ben had his 18 month checkup last week. He is perfect, of course, tracking in the 50th percentile for weight and the 60th for height. Or maybe I reversed those. He also got three shots and barely blinked.

Anyhow, Matt (who took him this go-around) questioned the doc about his milk habit. The kid will go through 2 gallons of milk in a week if we let him. As in we bought two gallons of milk on Saturday and by the next Saturday they were gone. Now Matt uses some for cereal and I use a smidge for cooking, but he also gets milk at his sitter’s. That’s a LOTTA milk! So she said to cut him back drastically, 2cups per day. We decided to ease him into it, closer to 3 cups a day and daaaamn it’s been hard. He wants his milk. And he will stand in front of the fridge and bang on the door screaming “BA BAAAA! BAAAAA BAAAAA!” until he gets it or passes out, whichever comes first. It was not a stress-free weekend but it does seem to be getting a bit better. Maybe.

Tabby
My sister likes to point out all of the atypical things we do that our kids are “just going to think is normal.” Running all the time, cooking all the time, crafting up crazy projects (like Matt’s Halloween project, a silly-string-spitting spider) and having tons of computers and gadgetry everywhere. And we like it that way.

Another thing we do that’s slightly atypical (or so I’m told) is give scientific explanations for her questions. Honestly, I mostly do this because I cannot think of a better way to answer her questions. I don’t see why I’d confuse her with some whimsical poetic crap when I can just tell her what’s up. For example in spring when it was getting warm and things were greening up we talked about our side of the planet getting closer to the sun and the sun and chlorophyll interacting to make the grass green. She loves talking about these things and remembers them almost verbatim. And if we don’t know something we look it up on the internet and she knows to ASK about looking it up on the internet.

So when she asked me last week why her brother’s army truck didn’t go as far or as fast on the carpet as it did on the hardwood floor, I explained to her about friction. And yes, I pulled out the term “coefficient of friction.”

Am I making her into a mini nerd??