That's what I hear over and over every day. The first time I heard it I laughed and thought, "How cute is that?!" Now, not so much. Oh, it's still cute but after that question comes another one which, quite often, I don't know the answer to. My three-year-old daughter has made me realize how very little I really know. Thank goodness for the Internet and Google.
Bryn's "why" stage started a few months ago. I thought she asked a lot of questions before but the past few weeks it's never ending. Non-stop. All. Day. Long. I've come to the conclusion the reason she doesn't sleep well is because her mind never stops. She's constantly thinking. I hear her talking in her sleep at night about things she's done during the day. When she's awake she's constantly asking questions -- why this, when that...it never ends.
Some of her questions are easy to answer. Why can't I have chocolate for breakfast? Can I have coffee when I'm bigger? Why do I have to go to bed? Are you old? I'm newer than you, right? Am I your baby? Was that good manners, mom? Can I have a goldfish?
Others require a little more thought and explanation ("because" isn't an acceptable answer anymore). Why can I see the moon when it's daytime? Why doesn't Jessie have hands ? Why can't babies walk? Why is poop stinky? Why does Jessie chew with her mouth open? Why do my fingernails grow? Why doesn't Pubba have hair on top his head? Why are you my mom? Why does Jessie have a hole in her bum?(!!) Why does the water go down that hole (in the tub) -- is that its home? It's hard to keep up!
The other day she asked me something and when I answered she replied with "why?" For every answer I gave her she asked why again. After a few minutes of that I finally said "Bryn, you can't ask why again every time I answer your question." "Why not?" she said. Sheesh.
Yesterday when I was answering one of her many questions of the day she interrupted me and said "Mom, what are you yakking about now?" Well, my sweet girl, I am not yakking I'm answering your question. "But why are you, Mom?" she said.
Fun with fingerpaints.
All dolled up for Chinese New Year celebrations.
Bryn has been a busy girl the past couple of months. She started another gym class in January and is having tons of fun there. She's had her first salon haircut (believe it or not, she has still only had her bangs trimmed), her first eye exam and her first dental appointment. The weather has been horrendous so we haven't spent much time outside this winter but we managed to take her skating for the first time. She spent the whole time watching her feet and asking questions about her skates but she seemed to enjoy it.
She also started at a new day care at the beginning of February and loves it. She surprised us by adjusting quickly to her new place and is always coming home with all sorts of stories of what she did that day. She loves her new caregiver and has lots of fun with the other kids there.
Potty training continues to be a challenge. I've tried everything -- stickers, Smarties, M&Ms, reverse psychology, pleading, even threatening to give her potty and Smarties away to someone else -- nothing works. The only time Bryn wants to sit on her potty is when I tell her it's time for her bath. Then she decides she wants to "try to go pee." She'll sit there and read and sing and accomplish nothing, sometimes for 1/2 an hour or more. Every time I try to take her off her potty she says she's not done trying and since I'm always trying to get her to sit on it, I can't very well insist she comes off. It's a stall tactic, I'm sure, because after her bath is bedtime and she's never in a hurry to go to bed.
"Lookit dad, I'm skating I'm skating!"
Bryn's very first professional haircut. Girard was so excited.
Helping great-grandma eat her birthday cake.
Bryn's imagination has really taken off and she loves to play pretend. She plays with the little people in her dollhouse and they have some very interesting conversations. She pretends to cook for us and has invented some delicious recipes, like mushroom dessert. She makes up her own words to the tunes of the songs she knows and she reads her books "different" a lot of the time with her own stories, which can be really entertaining.
Every day she says something to make me chuckle. One day she told me she doesn't like when it's snowing, she likes it "better when it's grassing." It took me a minute to figure that one out. A few weeks ago she was standing in front of the TV, which wasn't even on, just looking at her own reflection. I asked what she was doing and she told me she was "watching the Bryn show."
Here are some more things Bryn has said over the past while that have made me chuckle:
- that's kinda weird
- that's hilarious
- speaking of which
- for some raisin I'm not tired
- I don't mind vegetables
- I was working too hard to pee in my potty so I peed in my pants instead
- I will be back in five-dee-five minutes. Is that a long time?
- I'm s'posed to listen to mom and dad and you're s'posed to listen to me. So listen!
I can't argue with that.
6 comments:
OH..how fun is all that info. I just love love love reading all of it. I can't even remember where to start on what I love. the pic by the post is lovely..and that's one great looking grt. grdma. Wow, I'm always amazed at the tendencies of all the girls. Yours is always thinking and mine is always moving:) Those are some questions that girl has! Glad you're up to it:)
Sometimes I get goosebumps reading stuff as it so parallels what's happening here - the pretending is huge. And when I read your first funny saying...I stopped dead....yesterday Ava was reading her ecard from Maeve and after each interactive thing she kept saying "that's so weird"!!!! My sentiments exactly after reading that from Bryn.
Thanks for the great end to my day:)
What an imagination Bryn has! You must be able to see the gears turning in that head of hers. Look out world! Pretty soon she (and you) will be walking encyclopedias.
I love all the pictures. Especially the one with great grandma. They look so happy to be with each other.
Glad to hear she enjoys her new daycare. Sounds like a very stimulating environment since she always has stories for you.
Looking forward to some tasty recipes from Bryn's kitchen!
Great update! I loved being on the receiving end of a why question myself! Where do you begin to answer half of those questions?! I can imagine what the Bryn show is like for you on a daily basis.
I'm glad the transition to her new daycare has gone well. What a relief for all of you.
You posted some wonderful photos too. Beautiful dress for Chinese New Year--was that the one you had made in China? I love the skating pics too.
Ah, it is so incredibly good to catch up on Bryn. Thank you for such a wonderful post. She really keeps you thinking with those questions, doesn't she? I love that inquisitive nature of hers.
The question about why you were yakking to her is hilarious! I laughed out loud about that one and I'm still smiling about it.
Oh, gotta run. Trying to steal a moment to myself when the yahoos are up and mayhem has ensued. Chat with you soon!
She is so precious. I love the photo of her getting her hair cut.
An award winning trilogy I read in the 90's described a group of extremely bright children being taught by brilliant scientists, many of whom they liked to drive half-mad by asking endless sequences of questions, which the scientists were foolhardy enough to try to answer as fully as possible.
Inevitably, the long splicing-and-dicing-and-spiralling sequence of answers to the mysteries of life, the universe, adoption, and everything in between reduced step by step all the way back to ... (drum roll):
The Big Bang!
An answer the children would shout out joyously seconds before their scientist-teachers could manage to mumble the magical origin-incantation in defeat themselves.
In the spirit of that trilogy, I suggest the following:
Here in Waterloo we have this think tank called the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (aka the PI). It is world-renowned. It is cutting edge. It is funded by the deep deep pockets of one of the RIM founders, and it has set itself the task of answering some of the most fundamental and universal Whys of our existence.
Having attracted the attention of wild-eyed rogue theorists from around the world, this summer Waterloo and the PI are to be graced by the presence of Stephen Hawking---considered by some the closest thing our 21st century global village has to a living Einstein. Hawking is coming to stay for an extended visit, and he will be doing so periodically for the next few years.
Hence, for Bryn I suggest we
A) approach the Institute and see if we can't get her a pre-booked position at the Institute for a private closed-doors, lock-the-windows Q-and-A session with its army of theorists and cosmologists. Or ...
B) Bring Bryn out to Waterloo during one of those periods when Stephen Hawking's hanging out at the PI, and when he rolls his wheelchair onto the balcony overlooking Waterloo Park, pop Bryn before him, and have the two of them go at it fundamental question-and-answerwise until one or the other collapses. With any luck, it may be Bryn, and you can guarantee yourself some peace and quiet as she absorbs Hawking's authoritative (and knowing Bryn, perhaps necessarily dissertative) responses.
It'll be months before she prepares her rebuttal to Hawking, finds the black holes in his logic, etc ...
Just think: you'd have a whole summer of respite!
Best,
Pat (Maeve's baba)
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