I've been thinking lately about the difference between knowing something as an adult and knowing something as a child and how often the very same knowledge translates so differently between the two.

For example, at some point in my childhood, someone told me that the belly button was how pregnant mommies got food and oxygen to the babies growing in their tummies. This information is more or less accurate and I knew it. However, in my mind, it translated to mean that mommies literally passed air and food through their own belly buttons into their tummies for the child. Nobody ever explained an umbilical cord to me and I never really thought about it. Now, one may ask, why would boys/men have belly buttons then. To me, it was just like nipples on men. They were just there for show and had no use whatsoever.

Nick also knows things that are totally wrong, yet somehow correct. He has explained to Shawn and I on numerous occasions that everyone starts out as a girl and, after they learn everything, they get to be boys. He will explain this as if it's scientific fact and you cannot convince him that he is wrong. I find it interesting that, in a way, he actually is absolutely correct. [The early stages of embryonic development are identified by the mother's genotype for the first several weeks. this means all embryos start out as the Mother's gender, female. If no DNA changes take place, the embryo REMAINS female. For a female embryo to become male, the Mother's body promotes a protein called the H-Y antigen, changing the X chromosome to a Y chromosome. Thus, the male embryo is created from the female embryo. - www.forandagainst.com] Now, what he knows and what actual is are totally different, but completely the same. I can't help but wonder where he gets his info from. Fascinating.

I know that Nick seems to already be smarter than I am and I know that, once he is able to utilize those smarts, we're all in for one hell of a ride. I also know that I'm going to have a blast hearing all about all the things that my children know and, on occasion, teaching them how wrong they are about things they know are right.