This afternoon, in the car

"Mom! Can I have the window down?"

"Get your foot inside the car! Keep it inside."

"I'll just put my hand out."

"No! Keep your hands inside!"

"Why?"

"Because it's unsafe."

"Why?"

"Because it is not safe."

"Why?"

"Because you could get hurt."

"Why?"

"BECAUSE YOUR HAND COULD GET RIPPED OFF AND THEN YOU WOULDN'T! HAVE! A! HAND!"

"Would my sticker fall off? What if I just put it on my other hand?"

Wordless Wednesday: Chocolate Pudding Edition

(With thanks to Kate Gosselin. Really.)

Advice to my husband's uncle on how not to ambush me into joining an insurance pyramid scheme

1) Do not invite yourself over for lunch, saying how much you want to have a visit and see the house, insist that you bring your famous ginger chicken, and then sit down with a cup of coffee and say, "How about you, Lasha? Wouldn't you like to work with families to make their financial futures brighter?"

2) When I say "No" do not try to manipulate me into saying yes. Just because I am a teacher does not mean I have any interest in "educating people about the way money works." Just because I am a stay-at-home-mom does not mean I have the time or interest in selling insurance.

3) When I say "No" it is not "a confidence issue" or because I am unwilling to try new things. It is because I know myself and anything related to sales is not for me.

4) I understand that these are sales positions, even when you tell me they are not.

5) If you want to make a presentation to try to recruit me (which will never happen), use the presentation to give me information about the position and what it involves. Do not try to sell me financial planning and insurance products. I have a financial planner. As I have already told you. Several times.

6) Don't tell me that "making families financially independent" is in any way equivalent to doing god's work. Just don't.

7) Don't ask me if I know any "doctor's wives" who might be interested in the positions. (I don't. Not any doctor's husbands, either.)

8) Don't tell me that my refusal to agree to even try this out has everything to do with your failure to communicate, since "communication is defined as one's ability to convince someone to do what you want." And do not, under any circumstances, use my child as an example, suggesting that I communicate most effectively when I convince her to do something she doesn't want to do. Um, no.

9) I will not be making any referrals, but I would refuse, on principle, to use a form that asks for the names of the "huband, wife, last name."

10) If you want me to even consider something like this, do not ambush me. If you had told me you wanted to come over to discuss a role for me in this business, I would have told you I wasn't interested, but would probably have agreed to listen politely to your presentation. Even if I was interested (which I would never be), I would not agree to do it based on the way you tried to trick me.

Becoming a baby (again)

My daughter is obsessed with babies. Specifically, herself as a baby. I can't even count how many times a day I hear her say, "I'm just going to 'tend to be a baby, okay?"

And can I tell you? It is not okay. It may be one of the most annoying behaviours in the vast repertoire of irritating three-year-old behaviours.

For Will, being a baby involves walking with her limbs held out stiffly in front of her, in a slow lurch that looks like something between Frankenstein's monster and a robot. Even worse, she refuses to speak, and instead cocks her head to one side and grunts, something I could barely stand when she actually couldn't speak and cannot abide now. Sometimes she will speak in a language of incomplete words or phrases, and of course, she will point at what she wants.

I know this is all part of Will's exploration of how she fits in the world, no longer a baby but not really that big, in the scheme of things. But late last night, as we drove home from Buffalo, Will explained her understanding of babies and growing up.

She started talking about all the things she would do when she was a baby again. I tried to tell her that she wouldn't ever be a baby again, but she was insistent. Paraphrased, she said, First I was so little, and then I grew bigger. And I will get bigger and bigger. And then when I am so big, I will go down and down and little. And then I will be a baby again.

I was curious about what it would be like when she was a baby again, and she described it in much detail. First, she told me I would have to bring up the high chair from the basement (I might need some help carrying it up), and she hoped it had a tray - does it have a tray, Mama? - because babies need trays, they can't eat food off the table. She told me I would have to buy some "mouthy things" because babies like them, and she will like them (pacifiers) when she is a baby. She described the dress we just bought for a friend's newborn and said she wanted a dress like that one, and we would have to get some new sleepers from Walmart (?).

By the time we got home, she was telling me that although purple is her favourite colour now, it will not be her favourite colour when she is a baby. Then it will be pink. But she will also like red and gray, but not yellow. I think the colour categorization alone went on for twenty minutes.

I found this peak into her mind fascinating. Fragments of Alice in Wonderland (the only scene she's watched) mixed into her thoughts on growing up leading to something more familiar. The most familiar part being me. In her mind, even after she's grown up and back down, I will still be there to take care of her, when she is a baby again.

I know three-year-olds get hurt, but I'm not sure I can take it

There are some things about being a mother that I pride myself on. Keeping a book of Will's drawings, complete with the story she has told me about each picture. Finding interesting destinations and workshops and activities to explore with my daughter. Remaining calm and flexible in most situations, from a spilled bowl of cereal to a potty accident to a really badly scraped up elbow.

When it comes to the medical stuff, though, I am only able to be calm and reassuring for one reason: my husband is a family doctor. Anyone would be impressed with my savvy ability to comfort a screaming three year old, unconcerned with the blood smearing across my shirt. What they don't see is me frantically mouthing silent questions at my partner over her shoulder: "Did you SEE her elbow? Is she okay? Stitches? Do you think she needs STITCHES?"

In the middle of the night it might be more of a panicked whisper: "Does she feel too hot to you? What about her breathing? Can we give her that? Are you sure?"

(Although I find his medical opinions invaluable, that doesn't mean I don't question every one. And yes, he does find that endearing.)

These past couple of weeks have been particularly trying in terms of accidents. I had heard that a person gets all her best scars as a three-year-old, but my heart can't take much more of this.

Last weekend, everything was completely normal. Bath was over and Will was putting on her pajamas. All of a sudden she started screaming, "My eye! My eye! It hurts!"

I lifted her onto the bathroom counter and called my husband over to look. We both thought we saw an eyelash in the corner of her eye, and I'm pretty sure I saw it wiped on to her cheek. But the crying didn't stop.

Will just kept holding her eye and telling us that it hurt. She begged to know, "When will it stop hurting?" I was terrified.

My husband looked again. And again. He was sure there was nothing in there. I knew she wasn't making it up. But she'd been rubbing her eye and it was swollen from crying; it was too hard to know what was causing her discomfort. I was as close as I've ever been to taking her into the hospital, but I also didn't want her traumatized by someone digging around in her eye socket if it wasn't absolutely necessary.

When my husband went to the pharmacy for eye drops, she calmed down a little, let me read her some stories. After the drops, which went better than expected, Will just crashed. I was convinced that whatever had been in her eye was gone, but announced that if she woke up saying her eye hurt we were going to the ER.

She did wake up rubbing her eye, asking why it still hurt. I could not believe I had let her sleep all night with something in there. Then my husband gave her another shot of the drops and within a few minutes she was herself, perfectly fine.

Fast forward to Monday evening. We were out on our almost finished new deck, having dinner with my husband's cousin, who Will had taken to calling "Zimbabwe" (what she heard from his name and the "Baba" title for uncle). She had finished her dinner, so I asked her if she wanted to draw while the grown ups were talking.

I brought out her purple lap desk, filled it with markers and told her to sit on the step behind the picnic table, on the part of the deck leading to the side door. She sat down and then scooted herself backward, and again.

I yelled her name three times and then saw her fall backwards over the side of the deck, through the space where the iron pickets will go. As she fell I gasped and turned away, covering my eyes. I couldn't get to her, but I still cannot believe I looked away. Then I heard my husband say oh my god, the family doctor who is never phased by any accident, and he had Will in his arms before I could even reach her. And I saw him examining her as he comforted her, as I looked for the inevitable bump on the back of her head and saw only dirt on her legs. She had somehow turned in the air. Somehow landed on her hands and knees in a way that did not even break anything, barely even scraped her up. And my husband said quietly, there's cement down here. Did you know there was cement? I knew there was cement. And I almost threw up, right there, and again later when I imagined it over and over again.

Will is fine. She told us she fell "first on my hands, and then on my knees, and then on my feet, and then on my head." There's a scrape on her hair line and one on her knuckle, and that is all.

And I can't even think about it, can't stop thinking about it. How things can happen in an instant. How I should have been more careful. Knowing that I am careful, and even if I become more fearful, more cautious, things can still happen. And she is my heart.

Why I love my husband

When he asked me the whereabouts of his running clothes, at 7:15 this morning, and I realized they were in the hamper of clean clothes I had hastily shoved into our daughter's closet just before the cleaners arrived, and for the first time in almost forever we were waking up without the child in our bed and she was, in fact, still asleep in the room with the closet that held the running clothes . . .

He just went downstairs and had breakfast.

That is love.

(He's also taking me to the ballet tomorrow night, but forfeiting his run so the sleeping child could sleep later in her own bed trumps even such an amazing date night.)

Something special

What are the highlights of a visit to Washington with a three year old?

1) Watching episodes of The Muppet Show in the car and then walking up the steps to the Lincoln Memorial, turning to read the giant etching of the Gettysburg Address and hearing your daughter exclaim, "It's Sam the American Eagle!"

2) Remembering how much fun it is to swim in a hotel pool. Somersaults! Handstands! Water wings! And that particular grown-up pleasure, the hot tub. (What's not so fun is forgetting your most flattering bathing suit in the hotel and paying them to fed-ex it to you in Canada.)

3) Pretending to be a giant panda eating bamboo. Not to mention seeing the phenomenon live a few feet away.

Will may have preferred playing on the zoo playground that was actually a giant pizza. Really! She had to push a giant mushroom across the dough in order to be able to climb onto (and slide down) the wedge of cheese.

4. Watching the oldest bug keepers in the history of the world trying to keep the children from standing too close to the tarantula at feeding time. ("She will shoot out her poisonous hairs when she's nervous! I've been hit and it itched for a week!") The best part may have been hearing the other keeper declare, as she counted up some green worm-like creatures, "I'm missing one!"

5. Wandering through the neanderthal section of the National History Museum and hearing Will announce, "I see something special!" in that singsong voice of the excited three-year-old. My sister and I looked over to see her holding the, um, iron private parts of a toddler neanderthal statue. "It's so, so special Mommy! What is it?"

I tried not to laugh. "You know what it is."

"You tell me!" She was still touching it.

"It's a penis."

"Whoo hoo! A penis!"

Will then almost danced from statue to statue looking for more special things. I'd call that a successful trip.