Kids pick up stuff so fast. Last week, BB and I found a pack of playing cards. (He was perturbed there was no 1 card. I told him A = 1, but he wasn’t buying it; he knows his ABC and 123, and you can’t just mix-and-match them.) He wasn’t sharing the cards with me, and I made a big show of pouting about it. He took all the cards and stomped out of the room, saying: “Grandma is my ONLY friend! I will share with Grandma!” Where did he learn that? Daycare, I guess?

To me it was all kayfabe and in good fun, but I guess BB felt bad, because a couple times later that day he randomly came and hugged me and said, “You’re my friend.”

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One cute but exhausting thing about BB is he asks “why” over and over. You give him a perfectly good answer, and a short while later he’ll ask the same question again. Sometimes it’s because he doesn’t like the answer (e.g., why there is no 1 card). Sometimes it’s a genuinely mysterious event that warrants further discussion. (When we were watching the fireflies, a car pulled into the cul-de-sac. “It’s the neighbors,” I told BB. They’re coming home.” Then the car turned around and drove away. Why? I said I didn’t know, but maybe they were lost. “I hope they find their way home soon,” I said. “It’s late. They’re probably tired and they want to take a bath and go to bed.” See my futile effort at priming BB for bath & bed. Anyway, you could see him turning that scenario over in his mind, and he asked about it a few more times the next day. “Why did the neighbors get lost?”)

Other times, there’s no real reason he keeps asking. For instance, on Wednesday, I got a haircut. “Why did you get a haircut?” he asked. I told him, “My hair was getting too long. It was getting in my eyes.” Simple. Uncontroversial. But he asked about it several more times over the next couple days.

Honestly, I think he’s just flexing his new skill for fun. It’s like when a twelve-month-old learns to walk. It’s SO cool and fun and he wants to walk ALL THE TIME. Well, BB has just learned the art of conversation, and more specifically asking “why,” and it’s also very cool and fun. It’s actually new that he can hold a conversation. Before, he could do sentences (often “I” sentences, like “I want warm milk”) but he couldn’t do a whole back-and-forth. Now that he can, there’s never a quiet moment.