I’m Good at Guessing Weight, Too
As a father of nearly 54 weeks, I consider myself something of a parenting expert. (Stop laughing.)
One of the things that I’ve become quite adept at is guessing babies ages. Henry befriends a young lad on the playground and I’m immediately stating how many months old he is to his mother. (“About 14 months, right?” “You’re right on! Here’s five dollars!”)
What does surprise me, however, is when other parents aren’t as adept. For example, there’s a guy who lives in the building next to us who has a daughter just about to turn three. We’re pretty friendly with their family, and the daughter (an adorable little girl who looks like a Cabbage Patch Doll come to life) loves “Baby Henry.” (She’ll often come up to me when I’m holding Henry and whisper in my ear, “I think you need to put Baby Henry down right here so I can hug him.” She loves to hug.)
We invited the family to Henry’s birthday party, but they had plans (a wedding in upstate New York). This past week, as I was taking Henry for a walk, I saw the father doing some work in their back yard, and we got to talking. I asked about their trip (good, except for a lot of mosquitoes), and he apologized for not being able to come to Henry’s party.
But then, he shocked me a bit.
“How old is Henry now?”
“Seriously? You don’t know?”
“Well, I know it’s his birthday, but I don’t know which one.”
“Craig,” I say, because that’s his name, “you have a young daughter, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And how old was she when she started to walk?”
“About 13 months.”
“And Henry, is he walking.”
“He’s not walking yet, no.”
“So how old do you think he is?”
“Two?”
So Craig, who is good at many, many things (he’s an airline pilot, can rewire a house, hang drywall with the best of them, and shovel manure like it’s going out of style) is not good with baby ages.
“He’s one, Craig. One.”
“Okay. I can see that.”
I’ll be sure when we go to his daughter’s birthday party next month to give her a car wishing her all the best on her sweet sixteen.
