Three-year-old questions get harder {and more real}

Sunday, November 24 was a day of a lot of firsts.

• My parents brought over all my cabbage patch dolls and barbies along with a pink barbie car.



• Maximus spent an hour playing with the dolls – putting clothes on them, putting them to bed.
• Maximus got into my make-up, which he has done before. This time he put my blush on.



• Maximus made his first pizza! Usually he helps Bryan put on the toppings, this time Bryan made him a rectangle pizza and he did everything from sauce to toppings. It went into the freezer for later. I imagine we’ll love the middle of the pizza because its full of sausage, onions, green peppers, and cheese. The outside will be good too since it has a lot of pepperoni.

While we were sitting down to eat pizza, Maximus asked me a very important question. As all important questions go, it was completely out of the blue and I was so surprised that I laughed out loud a little. “Mommy, how do you make a baby?” After I recomposed myself, I looked over to all the dolls on the floor and decided he was talking about them. “Well, you need hair and a face and legs and arms and ears.” “And, eyes,” says Bryan. “Yah, and a butt and a penis!” says Maximus. Satisfied with my answer, he turned to Quinten and started naming other parts. When he was finished, “Yah. That’s how you build a baby!” Next up, “how do you make a mommy?” We decided it was the same except mommy’s need shoulders.

And the next bomb. “Mommy, do you have a penis?” And then I dropped my pizza on my plate and used that as a distraction. Except he still remembered a few minutes later. “Nope.” “Why?” “Because mommy’s don’t need one.” “Oh.”

And then I vowed to never have a family dinner ever again. 😉 But, really, I didn’t think we’d have such deep questions so early. I’d like to believe he was just thinking about the dolls, but I suppose there’s a good chance he was wondering where Quinten came from. Earlier in the day we had talked about Christmas and he remembered where our tree was last year. We talked about how that was when Quinten was a little tiny baby. Luckily, these questions come after a few months of experience in the why stage so I know that he needs a three-year-old answer. He doesn’t need the full truth or something elaborate. Sometimes it’s raining because the ground is thirsty. Nothing more to it.

Have you had to answer a tough kid question lately?