#367 Conversations with a threenager

I missed my self-appointed deadline yesterday to blog at least one a week by Tuesday evening, but in my defense, 2018 has kicked off in a spectacularly horrible fashion, and it just slipped my mind last night. However I intend to be as unforgiving to myself as possible.

As there is a desperate need for happy things at the moment, I think today I want to reflect on the many varied and surprising conversations I find myself having with our three year old now that he has reached that stage of language development where conversation is possible, even if it does leave me swimming in confusion, unable to follow the leaps and bounds a toddler’s mind makes with my rigid, societally moulded, adult brain. In a nutshell, there are a lot of words. Not so much with the sense.

“Did you have a good day in school today, honey?”

“Can’t talk.” He declares lightly, barely sparing me a glance.

“Why can’t you talk?”

He frowns at my breach of his directive. “No, mommy. You can’t talk to me until Fwiday.”

“Friday? But… that’s two days away! I can’t talk until then?”

“Nope. We can talk on Fwiday.”

I was apparently allowed to elicit his opinon on whether he wanted a banana or an apple in the shop, and otherwise give him verbal queues like, “come on, put the banana on the scales and push the button” and “OH MY GOD PLEASE DON’T BANG THE BANANA AGAINST THE WINE BOTTLE DISPLAY!!!” but nothing else.

“So I really can’t talk to you until Friday? At all?”

He waved me away as if I was an annoying fly. “Tomowwow and tomowwow and tomowwow, mommy. We can talk tomowwow when its Fwiday.”

“But… tomorrow is Thursday. And Friday only comes after Thursday. That’s a long time.”

“Don’t be silly, mommy.”

Five minutes later after a period of silence.

“Wait for it…. wait…. oh!” He stops suddenly in the middle of the footpath and looks up at me his face full of anticipation. “It’s Fwiday now!”

“Really? Two days went by that fast?”

“Yeah!”

“I can ask you about your day now?”

“Yeah!”

He babbled at me for the rest of the way home. I couldn’t puzzle out most of what he was saying other than it involved a meatball. “The same meatball, mommy.” He looked scandalised. “The same meatball! YOU CAN’T TALK ABOUT THE SAME MEATBALL!!!”

I feel like I need to walk round with a tape recorder these days because these pearls of amazing wisdom just drop from his mouth endlessly and I itch for my laptop to record them immediately before they slip from my memory. Too many have already faded, leaving behind only memories of suppressed laughter and mirth. Some of his best conversations happen when he’s seated on the toilet and one of these days I swear will actually start sneaking videos of his face as he talks to himself while reigning from his elevated throne.

The less fun conversations are those that revolve around the question “Why?” We’ve had a taste of this before, but it’s now come out in force as he enters that phase of childhood where most adult explanations are never sufficient. When I do eventually stumble on some form of reasoning that he finds acceptable he does nod his head at me sagely and say “Oh!” to me, only he says it deliberately and with elongated vowels that make it sound almost like some imitation of a taunt “Eh-oh-uh” in a faked posh accent. However that is a much preferred outcome to the ceaseless and circuitious “why” questions that continue until I find myself saying the most ridiculous things to him.

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s just the way it is.”

“Why?”

“You know, with all these ‘why’ questions, aren’t you afraid of the Whyasaurus?”

He gives me a blank look. “What’s a Whyasauwus”?

“It’s a dinosaur and his favourite food is little boys who keep asking ‘why’.”

“Oh don’t be silly, mommy.”

What? I’m being perfectly serious. They hide in dark corners and jump out and go OM NOM NOM and eat you if you ask ‘why’ too many times.”

“Nooooo. They that’s not what they eat.”

“No? Are you sure about that?”

“Yeah. They eat gwass.”

Right… back to the drawing board for answers.