It's question time

Our daughter is three years old.

This means that morning, noon and night we answer questions. At first, the questions were solitary and easy, as in, "What's his name?" or "What is she doing?" Then, as she passed her third birthday, Ellie's questions became more persistent and repetitive. "Mommy, whatcha doing? Whatcha doing now? Mommy? Mommy, what are you doing?" If asked to stop, she would switch to, "What's Daddy doing? What is he doing now? Mommy? Mommy, what is Daddy doing?"

Within a few weeks of her third birthday, Ellie was asking the all-time classic preschooler's question, "Why?" At first, I was able to derail this by turning the question back at her, saying, "Why do you think?" However, within a day or two, Ellie had wised up to this tactic, and began responding to that with, "Tell me, Mommy! Tell me!" Then I tried directness by telling her, "No more questions now, Ellie." Her answer to that was always, "But why? But why, Mommy?" Sadly, my next step was to fall back on the old parents' standby: "Because I SAID SO! THAT'S WHY!" to which Ellie's response is, naturally, "'Cause why?"

As time passes, however, Ellie is really branching out with her questions. She completely floored me this week by asking me, "Mommy, how do you spell 'laptop'?" Mind you, she's three years old and I don't think she knows how to read yet, unless her preschool is teaching her a lot more than I realize. Jason and I suspect that she's doing this because we tend to spell things out if we don't want her to understand what we're talking about. Therefore, she's starting up a spelling database so that she can decode our conversations! This suspicion is being confirmed whenever she asks how to spell things like "Great America" and "Grandma."

Yup, can't wait to see what questions she asks next.