I feel like in the past 12-18 months, a lot of babies have been born. Perhaps it's just my perception because I have been more aware of babies/pregnancy since having my own child, I'm not sure. In any case, there are other babies everywhere I go. It has been both good and bad. Good because it makes small talk easier for me, because I can talk about my kid all day. Bad because I always get asked questions that I don't know the answer to, and it makes me feel inadequate as a parent.

Far and away the most frequent example of this is with regard to weight. Ask me my boy's size at birth, and I can tell you his weight to the half ounce. That's not the problem. The problem is when mother to 6 month old Jacob (because aren't all babies named Jacob these days?) says:

"Oh, my Jacob is getting so heavy for me to carry! He just had his 6-month appointment, he weighed 19 pounds! He's in the 90th percentile. How big was your boy at 6 months?"

My mind was racing. That was like, 6 months ago! And I was sleep deprived! What's your name again? "Um... I barely remember what I ate for dinner last night," I joked. Then I fought through her condescending glares until we said our goodbyes.

This very scenario has happened more times than I can count. There's little worse than when another parent makes you feel as if they're doing more for their kid than you are for yours. Even though remembering what my boy weighed 3, 6, and 9 months ago has nothing to do with my ability to take care of him and love him, it's something that Jacob's mom is doing when I'm not!

Unfortunately, it took me almost a year to get around to preparing myself, so that I can avoid these awkward situations. I went into the boy's medical records and I wrote everything down. Then, last week, I went to a tattoo parlor and got the information inked on the inside of my forearm. Ages, weights, heights, percentiles, everything. The whole time I was hoping to run into Jacob's mom again. "NOW we'll talk percentiles, lady. Seriously though, what is your name?"

So last night, I found myself in another one of those situations with other parents of infants. Like clockwork, 5 minutes in, the conversation turned towards weights and percentiles. I was rattling information off like my name was "Father of the Year." It was great. A few minutes later, the conversation went off in another direction. My mental victory lap was interrupted by Emily's dad saying:

"So Omar, when did your boy start solid foods?"

(sigh) Crap.