Stumped

            Try as I may, there are some things that I cannot answer…correctly. I consider myself an educated person, interact on a daily basis with educated people, and spend much of my time at work researching things such as “Ligers” (google it, you’ll be hooked)  and when to use “Who” or “Whom.” There are a few things in life that stump me though, and the majority of those few things are questions from the curious mind of my 3 year old. Yes, I realize that all kids ask “why” all of the time, but I really do try to give the correct answers to him, and because of this Benji seems able to think and reason at the level of a certified genius. Some of the questions are simple…and some, not so much…

Saturday at the grocery store…

Ben: I gotta go potty.

Me: Okay, I do too, let’s go.

Ben: Wanna play swords?

Me: Umm…NO.

Ben: Why?

Me: Umm…let’s just go potty.

How do you answer that in public and why do little boys think that playing “swords” in the bathroom is the coolest thing in the world?

 

A few weeks ago, Ben in the bathroom at our house…

Ben: I pooped!

Me: Did you wipe?

Ben: No.

Me: You need to go back in to the bathroom and wipe.

Ben: Why?

Me: So your butt doesn’t itch.

And…

An ongoing battle…

Me: Ben, take your fingers out of your mouth.

Ben: Why?

Me: So you don’t get worms

Ben: Why?

Me: They’ll make your butt itch.

Ben: Why?

Me: I don’t know, just stop chewing on your fingers.

So, in life, I’ve found that there are some really great answers to some really great questions, and then there are the questions that seem so simple, but we have no idea how to answer them. My poor child is going to grow up believing that chewing on his fingernails will give him worms (which is what my childhood babysitter used to tell us…thanks Sharon), simply because I can’t explain germs to him because he can’t physically see them. It’s funny to me that the older my children get, the dumber I feel!