99th percentile

Impossible.

That’s what I said when Anna told me the recent news. Benjamin, fresh off a visit with his baby-doc, had grown to the incredibly immense size of 32 pounds 12 ounces and 35 inches tall. Benjamin now weighs just barely more than a slug, which, for the uninitiated, is defined as the amount of mass that accelerates at 1 ft/s² when 1 lb of force is exerted on it (at least that’s what this smarmy English dude told me). This is also the weight of an average 3½ year old. Yes, you read that correctly. Ben probably weighs more than your kid if he/she was born anytime after April of 2003. Now, considering Benjamin was born in April of 2005, I would think that this is worth expounding upon.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you already know that our little boy has been abnormally large for almost all of his abnormal life. He was born a pedestrian 7 lbs, 11 oz, and measured a mere 20 inches tall. But ever since he was introduced to this thing called “solid food”, his girth has rocketed straight off the charts. His weight has maintained a level above the 99th percentile since he was around 6 months old, and I would imagine we’d find it nearly impossible to locate another member of that upper one percent. To the best of my memory, I have only seen one other kid Ben’s age in the past 18 months that appeared to be bigger than bigger ben, and that kid doesn’t count because I think he was actually a polar bear.

And the interesting thing is, Ben’s rate of weight-gain has actually slowed down! For the first time his height is almost exactly proportional to his weight. While Ben’s length was always well above the 90th percentile, he is now around the 99th. That’s about the height of your average 30-month old. Or the height of a standard barber pole. Or a small house. Put another way, Michael Jordan would have a difficult time leaping over Ben’s head (and who’s to say Ben couldn’t just reach up and swat the ball away? I can just hear Ben telling Michael to “get that weak sh*t outta here!”).

It’s amazing. Ben is so big, other smaller objects gravitate toward him. At any given moment you’ll witness an array of crayons, food particles, and neighborhood animals orbiting his midsection.

He is so tall, he hits his head on the very same table just three weeks ago he could walk under unimpeded. We’ll soon have to buy a new kitchen table for all the dents and nicks Ben has created with his forehead. And no object is safe on the edge of the table anymore. While most parents start worrying about placing their drinks too close to the edge of the table when their kid gets to be two or three years old, we’ve already had to take everything off of our table because Ben can reach all the way to the middle. Candles? Decorative centerpiece? Forget it.

Ah well, such are the joys of parenting in high-speed. I suppose it’s only appropriate, given the times that we live in, that our kids should grow up too fast as well. I just thought that when my parents kept telling me that we should treasure these moments because they’ll sweep past you before you know it, that that would include treasuring a baby-sized baby as well. Ben hasn’t been baby-sized since he was four months old.

And I thought for sure by now Anna’s arm would fall off from under the weight of the “infant” she’s carried around for so long. And her back! She’s forced to pick up and lug around a three-year old on her hip because although he can walk, he usually can’t walk fast enough. Let me ask you: when’s the last time you saw a skinny little mom at the mall lugging around her three-year old instead of letting the kid run circles around her?

We had a toddler at 6 months. We have a pre-schooler at 18 months. What will we have at three years? A pre-teen? An adult? A horse?