Will there be a test on this?

I'm an accounting manager. I'm pretty good with numbers. I have a lot of them floating around in my head. Bank account numbers, routing numbers, federal tax id numbers, logins and passwords, resale numbers and phone numbers.

I do have a pretty good memory for these things. I'm the token family member that everyone calls to clarify when so and so's birthday is.

But with all of that, it's nothing to compare with the numbers of parenting. It starts with the number of weeks pregnant you are....the day of your last period and your due date.

Then with the birth of your child comes a whole slew of them.

For example...........

Emily was born 8 days late, on 5/23/99 at 8:37 after 36 hours of labor, 9lbs even, 22 inches, and I even know her social security number. But lord help me, I don't know what room number we were in or her head circumfrence.

2 additional kids later, and I still manage to retain all of this info. Although I will admit that I only know half of Damien's social, and Caliana's not at all.

As they grow, the numbers continue to accumulate. How old they were when they rolled over, laughed, crawled, walked.......how long they breastfed. 13 months, 11 months and 14.5 months respectively, if you want to get technical.

And why do we need all of this info? Other moms want to know. What week of pregnancy did I start getting morning sickness? When did it stop? When did I start to show? How long did I push? And on and on.

Yesterday, I was at Emily's gymnastics practice and there were a couple of women sitting behind me chatting. They both had little girls approaching one year and they were comparing stats.

"How many teeth does she have?"

"Eight!"

I'm so glad no one asks me this any more. I have no idea. The teeth come in, the teeth fall out, more come in. I don't even know how many teeth "I" have. Why do we care? It's hard enough to keep all of my own stats straight, I don't need to know how many teeth a strangers baby has at any point in time. Or that her baby started walking at 9 3/4 months. NOT that I didn't do it too. I'm totally guilty. But, it's all kind of ridiculous. No wonder I can never tell you what room number my kid is in. I can barely remember what grade they're in.