Friday, April 16, 2010

Backseat traffic cop

Driving in the car with Zach is an interesting experience these days. It's certainly never been a quiet experience, but lately, this is what I hear:

What's the speed limit on this road? (answer: 40)
Are you going 40??

What's the speed limit on this road? (answer: 55)
Are you going 55??

What's the speed limit on this road? (35)
Are you going 35??

If you dare to answer anything other than "yes" to the second question, say if you're still accelerating from a stop, then you must also be prepared to explain why. Needless to say, a lot of rounding happens in our car.

These new favorite questions have not replaced his other favorite questions:

How many minutes until we get there?
Now how many minutes until we get there?

A question increasing in popularity is "what's that sign?" Good luck explaining this sign to a three-year-old:

And we seem to have a lot of this particular sign in Woodbury.

A few weeks ago, when explaining one of the signs (can't remember which one), I made the mistake of mentioning that there are lots of rules of driving. So Zach, of course, wanted to know them. I listed about six I thought he could easily understand, things like speed limits, driving on the correct side of the road, etc etc. But that wasn't enough - he just kept asking me what the other rules were. Sigh. Can't we just listen to the radio?

3 comments:

Sarah, Brien, Aiden and Ava said...

We recently checked out a great book about signs from the library. They were real photographs of all different kinds of signs. Zach would LOVE it! I'm glad he's keeping you on your toes! :)

Kayelynn said...

What a smart kid!

Kristin said...

Liam likes to give racing instructions while driving--like go faster, why don't you pass that truck, why is that truck passing you...nice...I do love that he is now recognizing the letters in the signs and he and Tim like to discuss the meaning of the signs. The other day i was informed as to what a Dead End sign meant--not having heard the original conversation I was a little thrown by this tidbit of info:)