Why?

Sarah hit me with her first "Why?" last week.

I put her in her crib, and she started her usual stalling game.

In this game, she asks for every conceivable item. Her hope is that I'll run off and fetch her request delaying her bedtime. She'll ask for vitamins, yogurt, socks, the newspaper, cookies, band-aids, etc. (Trust me. I've heard it all.)

The problem, for her, is that I don't play the game. My strategy is to give her one thing - a drink of water. Then, I tuck her in and turn off the lights.

So, the other night, she's in her crib, and I break out the usual glass of water. She says, "No. I want it in my baby cup." I say, "I'm sorry we're having it in the noisy cup." (Yeah. We have labels for all of our drinking vessels. A baby cup is a sippy cup. A noisy cup is a drinking glass. Kids make you do ridiculous things like that.)

She insists a few more times that she wants it in her baby cup. I keep saying no and explaining that she's going to drink it out of the noisy cup. Just as my patience is wearing thin, she looks at me and asks, "Why?"

Do you think I came up with a clever answer, some great reason why my method was the best? No. I did just what every parent before me has done and blurted out the phrase that every kid hates, "Because I said so!"

Just like that, I became the parent that as a kid I swore I'd never become.