Some time ago, the Toddler got the idea in her head that she is in charge of the radio in the car. If I try to listen to sports radio, she loudly voices her need to hear music. Once I turn on music, she voices her need to listen to different music. Given her choice in things, I do believe the child would listen to SexyBack by Justin Timberlake and Maneater by Nelly Furtado at least 37,492 times in a row. Oh, wait. Maybe that's how many times we've already listened to those songs. Either way, I've gotten so sick of those two songs that I've actually contemplated buying Britney's new album. I know, that's some desperate shizznet right there. (Don't worry, my dear husband will make sure I don't actually stoop to that level.)

In my fervent attempts to put an end to the recurring assault on my ears, I have decided to try something new in the car. Every day when I pick Alexis up from school, I try to engage her in some sort of conversation as we make the four minute trek to our house. I usually ask her what she did at school, who she did it with, whether or not it was fun, what she ate, and all of your basic attempts at small talk, albeit with a person who still thinks the sentence "I pooped in the potty" warrants a parade and three ring circus, even if she didn't actually perform the aforementioned task. Let's just say she's not quite yet a master conversationalist.

Some days I actually get some meaningful answers from her. For example, I do believe that today she played with Barbies and that Shelle read her a story. Last week she told me a hysterical story about Eva Dawn. I don't really know what the story was about, since I could only understand Eva's name, but Alexis sure did think it was a funny story. She literally had tears streaming down her face as she gasped to tell the story in between giggling fits.

Most days, our conversations are pretty one-sided. I ask a question, she answers yes or no. I ask another question, she rolls her eyes at me then answers yes or no. I ask a question, she sighs and then answers yes or no. I ask yet another question, she whines then answers yes or no. It has not escaped my attention that these little three to four minute conversations are just the beginning of a lifetime of her getting annoyed at me for asking too many questions. Hopefully when she's a teenager and we're back to one or two word answers (assuming, of course, that somewhere along the line she learns to actually talk to me in complete paragraphs), I'll be able to look back at these days and remember when our conversations were choppy and awkward because her vocabulary was limited, and not because she hates me.