In honor of my niece Taylor’s 18th birthday yesterday, I thought I would share a story that shows, once again, how smart I am…especially in the ways of child-rearing:

When my oldest sister was pregnant with her first child, my family decided to do a little contest to guess the date of birth and the weight of the baby. I now have eight nieces and nephews, but this was the first. Though I thought having a niece would be cool, I was 16 and mainly interested in sports and girls.

When approached for my guesses, I said that I had no idea how much a baby weighed at birth. My sisters prodded me to guess anyway, so I thought for a moment: Okay, be smart about this. A newborn is about the size of a dumbbell, right?

I looked at my sisters in all seriousness and said, “Alright, I am going to guess 25 pounds.” I could quickly tell by the looks on their faces that I was not going to be winning this contest. Their initial shock (and horror) quickly turned to uncontrollable laughter, as they told me what a typical newborn weighs.

Moral of the story: apparently babies are not made of steel or cast-iron.

My family still likes to bring this story up.