This was an excellent day to be born, I’ll tell you.
I know from experience.
This happens to be my birthday. No need to give me a shout-out, or any such deal. I was simply riding on the planet for another trip around the sun. I waved to Jupiter and Neptune when we passed.
Anyway. We’ve all been born. We have that in common. But how many of us showed up on time? Well. Not that many.
Only 5 % of babies are born on their due date. That’s a pretty low percentage. But we get here eventually, as about 50% are born within one week of the due date. I’m not sure if I hit the mark or not, but I’ve calculated my parents’ big night. It was most likely August 7, 1963. A Wednesday night. It rained that day. And Jackie Kennedy gave birth to little Patrick that day. So, go figure. Mom and Dad made a baby.
Anyway, when I came out, I was a pretty big newborn. Nine pounds, ten ounces. Chumba. But April is not the month for the heaviest babies. Neither is December or January. Nope. Babies born in the month of May are the heaviest. The chunkiest baby ever born was a boy who weighed 22 pounds, eight ounces. He was born in Italy in 1955. God. His poor mother.
Nevertheless. Here is something else you should know about me. I was born without kneecaps. But so are all babies. Yeah, we didn’t get our bees knees until we were about six months of age. Until then, it was just soft cartilage. We had more bones back then too. Around 300. But as we turn into adults, many of those bones fuse together and we whittle our number down to 206. No bones about it.
Some people think that babies’ senses aren’t as developed. But it isn’tisn’t true. Newborn babies can hear, smell, and see just about as well as adults. But the big difference is that all these things are new to a baby. A baby’sbaby’s brain cannot process the information as well as an adult brain can. Heck, I’mI’m still trying to process all this information.
Finally, I first learned to smile when I was about a month old. There are pictures of this. I was one smiley baby. Some kids look like they are smiling earlier, but it is really just gas. The real smile doesn’t occur until we turn one month old.
So here we all are. We were born, and this is the result.
Each day, we continue to take it all in and process the information.
With that, I hope today brings you loads of good smiles. But not the gassy kind.
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“My mother groaned, my father wept, into the dangerous world I leapt.”
― William Blake
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“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”
— Albert Einstein
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“Giving birth is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head.”
— Carol Burnett
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