3-year-old wit

Most of the time, Maggie's humor is solidly in the Silly Camp. But every now and then, she really surprises me with her wit.

Like tonight.

As background, lately when she's asked a question, she often likes to give me hints to her preferences rather than come right out and give a straight answer. For example, I'll ask her what kind of cereal bar she wants to eat for a snack, and she'll point to something red -- meaning she wants strawberry. I'll ask her whether she wants to wear the Curious George panties or the Strawberry Shortcake panties, and she'll say, "It starts with an S." And every time she brushes her teeth, she tells me which toothpaste she wants to use by mimicking the animal or character featured on the tube. (I'm not sure how, but she's ended up with three different tubes of toothpaste: Dora, Hello Kitty, and Curious George.)

Usually she wants George, but he was still packed from our trip, so tonight when she made her monkey sounds I told her to pick from Hello Kitty or Dora. In the past, if she wants HK, she'll meow, and if her choice is Dora, she'll hum the Dora theme song. But tonight, when she was deciding, she thought for a minute then said, "Hello ..." (long pause) I was about to reach for the Hello Kitty toothpaste when she completed her sentence: "... Is Dora there?"

I started laughing, and she proudly said, "I tricked you, Mommy!" She knew exactly what she was doing when she said "Hello" and then paused. It's things like this that I never thought I'd be dealing with at age 3 that make me really afraid for the future. We've already established that she's smarter than I am ... I think it's only going to get worse and worse. ;-)