Time: according to a two-year-old

Had a similar version to "are we there yet?" with my two-year-old the other day. I was drying her hair and she was not very happy about it. Of course she wanted to be free and playing with her siblings. The first minute or two were fine, but then she said "are you done yet?"

"No," I replied. "A couple more minutes."

"Now, are you done?" she asked as soon as my sentence was complete.

"No."

"Now?"

This went on and on. No matter how many times I told her it would be couple more minutes, she would immediately come back with "now?' I finally just pretended I couldn't hear her over the blow dryer and ignored her. (Classy parenting, I know.)

Time is a something that takes kids awhile to grasp. When I was growing up my parents used to tell us how long it would take to get somewhere in relation to TV shows we watched. For instance it took a Sesame Street, a Mr. Rogers and half a Reading Rainbow to get to our family cottage. (I watched A LOT of PBS as a child.)

Now with DVD player in the car kids can actually WATCH a Sesame Street, a Mr. Rogers and half a Reading Rainbow before getting there. Although I don't think too many kids watch the latter two. They are TV classics though ...

When they are not asking again, and again, and again "are we there yet?" or "are you done?" it can be pretty cute to hear them explain time as they see it. For my four-year-old son, everything that happened in the past happened last week. The day after tomorrow is "tomorrow, tomorrow." When you tell my youngest something will happen tomorrow however, she immediately says "now?"

It's pretty adorable (when it's not annoying).

I guess that is why preschool, kindergarten and first grade teachers frequently make "cookbooks" from recipes recited by their students. I use the term cookbook loosely here because no one would actually make any of the recipes out of it.

Most of them read something like this:
Chocolate chip cookies
2 tabs of butter
6 eggs
5 cups of sugar
sprinkle of flour
15 chocolate chips

Mix together and bake at 10 degrees for 4 hours

(Come on kid, the oven doesn't even cook that low, how I supposed to make these cookies? They sound delicious though. Five cups of sugar, yum! But why so stingy on the chocolate?)

On a side note, it's March 12 and we just got about six inches of snow dumped on us. I am just sad. We actually had grass showing for a couple days and now ... sigh ... now I get to get the stupid snow blower out and clear the stupid driveway of all this stupid snow. (Actually the snow blower isn't stupid. It's saving me from a lot of bad breaking shoveling. So, snow blower, you are wonderful, I just wish I didn't have to use you on March bleepity bleepin' 12!)

I need chocolate ... and more then 15 chocolate chips.

Are you done reading? How about now? Now? OK, when you are, click on the Top Mommy Blog logo at the top and vote for me. You can come back and do it tomorrow, too!