Outnumbered.

An interesting dynamic in our household is the fact that I am the only one who is not gifted. I'm perfectly bright, I have a Master's degree...I can hold my own. Nevertheless, I am not gifted. My mind doesn't make amazing connections, I don't learn effortlessly like the rest of my family seems to, I don't process information fast.
It's odd to parent two little people and to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are smarter than you are. The first time I realized that Kat was smarter than me was when she was about 9 months old. Peter and I were sitting on the floor with her one night teaching her how to use her shape sorter. We dumped all of the blocks out on the rug and showed her the holes in the top of the box and how each shape fit in its own spot. We did a few and handed her a shape. She popped it right in so we clapped and smiled and gave her another one. She popped it in so we clapped and smiled and gave her another one. We did this 4 times until she looked me straight in the eye with a funny look on her face then pulled the top off of the box and proceeded to put the rest of the shapes in the box and the lid back on.
Our 9 month old showed us the most elegant solution to the problem at hand. If we wanted the blocks in the box, she would get them there for us.

Discovering that Drew is smarter than me has been more of a process. Drew wasn't supposed to walk or talk. Yet he was reading letters at 18 months, some words at 2 years, doing addition and subtraction at 3 years, and still surprising us daily with the things he does. He isn't as flashy as Kat, it would be easy to miss his intelligence, but it is there. He's my tortoise, slow and steady.

Peter is a genius. There is no doubt in my mind about that. There is nothing mechanical that he cannot fix, there is no problem he cannot solve. He's both hilarious and endearing when he talks about building machines that build machines.

It's interesting being the intellectual lightweight around my house. They all completely depend on me and love me deeply. I just wonder when they are going to realize that they're all smarter than me! (Peter knows this, of course, but is too kind to let on that he knows!)