Punctuation marks

Holding Jane these days is like holding an upside down exclamation point.

For some reason, with better head control has come a fascination with testing my reflexes by suddenly straightening out and watching to see my reaction.

For his part, Samson is now a question mark. The number of times he asks "why?" in one day is fast approaching the number of decimal places in Pi.

Nothing escapes the why-ness of the Sam these days. On our way to school, he not only questioned why we were stopped at a red light, but why the light was red, why our car is white, why it was a school day, and why a woman was on the sidewalk with her dog.

The answers, in case you're wondering, are as follows: We stop at red lights because it's the law; the light is red to let people know to stop and let other drivers have a turn; our car is white because that's the color it was painted at the factory; it's a school day because it's Monday, and you go to school on Mondays; the woman is walking her dog because it needed some fresh air.

Vicki blames me for encouraging this ceaseless questioning, but it seems silly not to answer at least the first hundred or so times.

Plus the whys at the beginning of the day are a lot easier to manage than the stalling-on-the-way-to-bed whys that come at night.