A question for Daddy

Eve and I had a great day today. We spent most of it at the Children's Museum, with a two-hour break for a playgroup birthday party picnic at a playground. Fun, fun, fun. I told her that we could stay at the museum until she got tired and cranky. She said, "I won't get tired or cranky." And she didn't. Maybe she got a little tired (there was some yawning on the drive home) but no crankiness.

Eve is still trying to put together how people and things grow. She seems to believe that babies do not have genders, that girls can grow into boys and vice-versa, and that adults can become babies.

One of the play areas at the Children's Museum has a health care theme, with a pretend ambulance, a doctor's office, and lifelike baby dolls to take care of. Eve, of course, spent a lot of time dressing and undressing the babies. She was intrigued (as was I) to find that there were two kinds of babies- boys and girls- with noticeable anatomical differences! Wow!

Our toothbrushing routine usually involves Eve trying to think of very interesting topics of discussion in order to distract me from my main goal. Tonight, she started in with her bit about "when I grow up to be a boy..." So I reminded her about the girl and boy babies at the museum, and said that since her private parts were like the girl babies, she was a girl, not a boy. She said, "But I want to be a boy." When I asked why, she said, "Because boys get smarter and smarter." WHAT? Where did she get that? I told her that both boys and girls can be smart, and that girls are quite often smarter than boys.

After we finished brushing, etc, we went to find Daddy. Eve said, "Can we ask him?" I assumed she meant the question about whether boys are smarter than girls. So I said, "Sure!" We found Dave, and I said, "Eve has a question for you."

And Eve asked, "Daddy, are your private parts the same as a boy's?"