An answer for everything--from Judah

Judah still thinks he knows everything. I know it's just a phase, and I know it will come back when he's a teenager, but it's cracking me up right now.

We're in the kitchen, and he says, "Mommy, I know everything."

"Judah," I say, "You have an answer for everything, but that doesn't mean you know everything."

"What is something I don't know?" (You have to imagine him enunciating every consonant and his voice getting really high on the "don't" part--very cute.)

It takes me a few minutes, but I finally think to say (while I'm looking at my struggling herbs reaching for the sunlight from my kitchen windowsill), "Do you know what photosynthesis is?"

He says, "Mommy, did you know that I don't tell people things that they already know?" Because my mind and the mind of my preschooler are always wandering, I'm thinking this comment is totally unrelated to our conversation. So I say, "Is that right?"

And he says, "Yes. Do you know what that is?"

And I say, "Photosynthesis?"

"Yes."

"I have an idea."

And Judah responds, "Then what is it?"

He almost got me. I cracked up laughing. That kid--on his quest to know everything--nearly tricked me into telling him the one thing I came up with that he didn't know. Really. This is what politics are made of.