The first few years of B-Dogg’s life, we were alarmingly cognizant of his developmental stages. This was especially important because he was our first child. By the time Queen Hadlifah came around we were too busy to track her progress (I know this sucks, but I’m a second child, who survived the same fate with relatively little emotional scarring… except a mild case of dementia).

Anyway, we labored over B-Dogg’s timelines for everything from size percentiles to physical achievements to verbal skills. Unfortunately, B-Dogg was a bit of a peanut, often scoring in the 10^th percentile for height and 5^th percentile for weight. To add insult to injury, we believed he suffered from “little man syndrome” thus making him significantly more aggressive than his larger male counterparts.

As far as physical milestones, B-Dogg was off the charts in the other direction. He walked with little assistance at seven months old and ran full throttle at ten months old. In fact, we are still attempting to catch him to this day.

As far as language skills went, I knew that by one year we’d be lucky to have our boy master ten to twenty words. My logic was that we needed to make those words count. So I went for the biggies, like dangerous, irritating and ethnocentrism (not that I necessarily subscribed to the belief, but because it was one of the largest words I knew).

ethnocentrism [(eth-noh-sen-triz-uhm)]
The belief that one's own culture is superior to all others and is the standard by which all other cultures should be measured. (a.k.a. “I’m proud to be an American!”)

Darned if that little booger didn’t pick up on every word we taught him. In fact, he mastered fifty nuggets by the time he turned one and was able to speak in compound sentences by two years old. Keep in mind that this is in no way a reflection on his parents, as he is already smarter than either of us (I think he takes after CuzKim³ and CuzCodyOdy).

But I do have to pat myself on the back for trying. Just the other day, I asked Queen Hadlifah how she liked her day at camp.

“It was hideous,” she replied.

That’s from a three year old… and a BLONDE.