I'm convinced that Anna's brain wakes up five minutes before her body does each morning.

Have you ever seen this lady on the packaging for baby monitors?

At first glance, this seems like a perfectly lovely mom, sitting with her computer...probably facebooking...and enjoying some alone time while her baby naps. You know what's wrong with it? (I mean besides the fact that Mom looks like she's already had a shower, is completely dressed and is sitting in a clean room.) That monitor is lit up all the way! That baby is screaming it's head off, and there sits Mom...smiling the creepiest kind of smile, when she should be a crumpled mess, collapsed in front of the couch, elbows on knees, hands grabbing hair and screaming, "Why won't that child stop crying?!?" I like to think the fact that I'm still crazy enough to completely lose it at any given moment means that I haven't drifted off into that scary, catatonic mom world that we all are one child tantrum away from. You know the one I'm talking about. I'm talking about the one that allows you to smile and have a conversation with another person while your child goes crazy in a public place, screaming like a nut, jumping on furniture and yanking you by the arm (MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!!) But you've gone to the other place. The place that allows you to completely block those sounds and never miss a beat in your conversation. I am not that mom.

So much of being a parent is mental toughness. Don't get me wrong...chasing a toddler around all day is physically demanding, but the mental game can be the one that gets me the most. When things don't go the way they should, I tend to lose it. But I think that's okay. It means that I know in my heart that things should be a little rosier than they are at that very moment. I can see the difference in my current reality and a place with more peace. And the difference in the two makes me snap. I'm okay with my tantrums. Really.

Lately, Anna has been asking the weirdest questions first thing in the morning. "How long is an hour?" Well, it's as long as your dance class. Do you think that's a long time? "No." Well, that's how long an hour is. "Then how long is 'a while'?" I DON'T KNOW! DON'T ASK ME THE HARD QUESTIONS BEFORE I'VE HAD MY CAFFEINE! But it's like that all the time now. And she's old enough to sort of reason through things too. It's not like when she was 3 and would ask me what words meant: "What's a republican?" (Yes, she asked me that. How do you explain that to a three-year-old?) She's always known big words, even as a very young toddler, and trying to dumb down the answers to a kid who tells you that "voting is our civic duty" was really tough. But now...Oh now. The constant "but why"s that follow everything, and the need to logically figure it all out. And the worst is when she outsmarts me!

Anna: "Mommy, how many bones are in my hand?"

Me: "Alot. Lots of bones make up the inside of your hand."

Anna: "What if I didn't have any bones in my hand?"

Me: "Then your hand would be this soft mushy mess that you couldn't use."

Anna: "Do fiction characters have bones in their hands?"

(She's obsessed with fiction vs. nonfiction books right now.)

Me: "Sure."

(She thinks for a second.)

Anna: "No, they don't. Because they aren't real people."

Geez! Is she right? I guess they don't. Score one for the 5-year-old. Oh yeah...and this conversation took place at 6:45am. Gone are the days when I could give her an answer, and she would just believe me because hey...I'm mommy. I know everything, right? Now, she needs logical answers in order to accept the world around her, and frankly...my brain is finding it hard to go between her world and Alex's in a split second. With Alex, it's just about words...any words. He points to an object, and I tell him. Couch. Light. Book. Ball. Cow. Triangle. I could tell him that a chair is a boat, and he would just accept it. Love that trusting kid. And I can't help but wonder if he will be as inquisitive as Anna. You know they say all children are different, so will he need to be as logical as her? I don't know. It will be interesting to see. Just as long as I don't end up smiling that creepy blank smile at either one of them when they ask me those tough questions. That's when we know there's real trouble.