Old enough

Maybe it's having a baby in the house, or maybe it's our current run through all of Beverly Cleary's Ramona books, which prominently feature Ramona's frustrations at being the littlest in her family, but Edith has become interested in the question of when she will be old enough to do various activities.

The other day she asked when she would be old enough to walk to school by herself. But she also has repeated earlier queries about when she will be old enough to drive, explaining that when she is old enough to get behind the wheel, she will drive Alice to her babysitter's in the morning. (We're still working on the idea that everyone ages at the same rate.)

When I let her manage the electric hand mixer during a baking venture the other day while I poured the dry ingredients into the wet, she asked with a mix of surprise, concern, and pride, "Am I old enough to be doing this?"

And in the most memorable recent query, she popped out at the breakfast table the other day with, "When will I be old enough to screw?"

For the record, she was interested in making a birdhouse.