Let's Talk About...

After the snafu with the daycare last winter, we moved the kids to home care with one of the ladies who had been Jelly's teacher since he was 2. I really love her and know she works really hard to deal with my persnickety ways. There is a slight issue in that her house is 17 minutes from mine and 15 minutes from my office. I guess in the grand scheme of life that is small potatoes, but it is double what the commute time from the daycare was.

This gives Jelly opportunities to grill me for information.

Every day, we get in the car and he says, "Let's talk about _______!" And what he means is, "Mother, tell me everything you can think of about a particular subject. I shall offer no input whatsoever."

When he was a bit younger, he wanted to talk about alligators a lot. They are reptiles. They are cold-blooded. The definition of cold-blooded. What other animals are cold-blooded. What is warm-blooded? Name the animals that fall into that category. Where do alligators live? What do they eat? Are the carnivorous or omnivorous. etc. etc. etc.

We also have Let's Talk About conversations about restaurants and street signs and soccer and Pokemon (oh, I hate the last one.) I wonder if this is the 4-year-old version of "Why?" And sometimes I really would just like to listen to the radio and concentrate on not getting us killed with all of the construction they are doing on the roads. Instead I should focus on this gift. For a small window of time, he wants to know what I have to say and what I think about the world. And he is hanging on my every word.