AJ and I went out to investigate the slowly thawing yard yesterday just before sunset. The lawn is looking bedraggled, mashed down for weeks by piles of snow and trampled by hungry herds of deer. We investigated the piles of bunny pellets (�Look, Mommy! The bunnies pooped!�) and wandered the perimeter of the garden. I was sad to discover that my Lenten rose is still hopelessly buried in snow. Perhaps it will flower by Easter. The daffodils, however, have begun to tentatively poke their pale green points up through the sodden earth. I brushed some leaves away to show AJ and he did a dance of joy. I felt kind of like dancing myself. Despite the bitter wind and the shower of snowflakes raining down on us, spring is coming.

I have spent most of the day with AJ who has been asking me many unanswerable questions. Things like: What color is oxygen? Why do shoes tie? What is a consonant? (I did a remarkably poor job at trying to explain this one). AJ also wrote me a poem, scrawled carefully across the entire surface of a page of drawing paper. It read:

Roses are red
violets are blue
I am noony
And you are too.

And now I anticipate another unanswerable question from you: What is noony? Noony is a word of AJ�s own invention. It takes on many forms. It is occasionally used as a synonym for silly. Occasionally it simply substitutes for a real word. As in, �It�s time to put on my noony!� which may mean that it is time to put on AJ�s jacket to go to school or time to put on his pajamas to go to bed, depending on the time of day. Mostly, though, �noony� is pure exclamation. Ned Flanders has �oodly,� AJ has �noony.�

It is entirely possible that noony was inspired by Ned Flanders. AJ walked in to my room while I was folding laundry and watching The Simpsons a week or so ago. �Oh, I LOVE this show,� he said. I was surprised, as I could only think of one previous occasion where he might have seen some of it and he had vociferously asked to change the channel �to an AJ show.� �You do?� I said. �What do you like about it?� AJ replied, �I like it because they are nice and yellow.�

Hard to argue with that. Still, he�s never expressed similar affection for Big Bird. He�s nice and yellow too.

�But Mommy, why are they yellow?

If you�d like some unanswerable questions of your own, try plopphizz�s Valentine Mad Lib. It is more fun than a barrel of monkeys. I found it courtesy of fellow Chicagoan luvabeans.

And now, I�m off to anticipate any unanswerable questions I may have to field at tomorrow�s paper delivery. Wish me luck.

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