Beanie stayed awake past ten the other night, long after the lights had been turned out, her sisters had fallen asleep, and even the story tape the girls were listening to had wound to its satisfying end and clicked off. I know this because she got out of bed and padded downstairs to tell us she couldn’t sleep. I followed her back up to the girls’ room and climbed into bed beside Beanie, because she is not quite five years old and the days when she won’t need mommy to snuggle with her are not so very far away.

She poured herself into the curve shaped by my arms and my swelling stomach, and we lay there a while in the dark, listening to the soft breathing of her two older sisters, while her newest sister, the one who’ll be born in April, bump-bump-bumped little taps against Beanie’s back. Bean sighed, the kind of long, happy, exaggerated sigh you only ever hear a child make. This is very good, that sigh was saying.

Then, into the hush, Beanie whispered a question. A dark room, late at night, cuddled up with your mother: it was exactly the sort of moment that brings out the philosopher in a child, and when she began to speak, I waited for the deep, probing question that was bound to come.

"Mommy," she murmured, "did you know that ducks never get wet? Because they have waterproof feathers!"

Um, no. No, I don’t think I did know that. Well, there you go.

I was cleaning the bathroom this morning when Jane came in to ask me how to pronounce the word "usurp." She had seen it in print a number of times but wasn’t sure how to say it. I told her, and then Rose wanted to know what it meant. So I gave some examples, including: "Or let’s say you’re sitting on my lap and I send you to get a tissue, and while you’re up, one of your sisters climbs in your place."

Rose started to giggle. "A usurper!"

Jane wandered back out with her book. Then Beanie came in and perched beside Rose on the edge of the tub while I wiped down the sink. Bean’s hair was wild; it hadn’t been brushed yet. I sent her to get her hairbrush and when she returned, I sat down on the tub’s rim to tackle her curls.

"Hey!" Bean cried indignantly. "You took my spot!"

Rose cackled. "You usurped, Mommy! You’re a usurper!"

"What’s that?" asked Beanie. Rose explained.

Bean pondered. "I think," she said, "that when a mommy surps, it’s okay."

"U-surp," Rose corrected.

Beanie was puzzled. "No I didn’t. Mommy surped."

"No, U-surp!" Rose insisted.

"I surp? But I didn’t! Mommy did!"

By this point I was choking with laughter. Beanie took my paroxysms for some kind of dismay.

"It’s okay, mommy, I don’t mind when you surp me."

"U-surp!" proclaimed Rose.

Beanie stared at her in disgust. "That’s what I SAID." She humphed out of the room before Rose could get in the last word. I sat there howling. Sorry, Abbott and Costello. Your place in my heart has been surped.

This morning’s thunderstorm scared Beanie out of her wits—almost.

"Don’t worry," she assured my mother. "I still have one wit left."

Well, that’s a relief.

One of my favorite things about motherhood is the way my kids force me outside the box of my own head. I like to collect the little moments when their startling pronouncements on life, the universe, and everything jolt me out of my sedate, grown-up patterns of thought and make me reassess my percerptions. Like these:

Jane was five years old and we were at a conference where I had a speaking engagement. At one point, a friend’s teenaged daughter took her to the drinking fountain. She later related this story to her mother, who passed it on to me. Apparently young Jane was delighted by the arc of the water as it came out of the spout.

"Look, I’m drinking a rainbow!" she cried. Then she took a drink, paused, and added thoughtfully, "That’s funny, I always thought rainbows would be crunchy."

***

Beanie was two years old, and I was reading her Dr. Seuss’s There’s a Wocket in my Pocket for the first time.

"Did you ever have the feeling," I read, "there’s a wasket in your basket?"

Bean burst out laughing. "A wasket in my basket! Dat’s funny."

I continued: "…Or a nureau in your bureau?"

Another enormous belly-laugh. "A nureau in my bureau! Dat’s weally funny!"

By this time I was laughing too. I went on, "…Or a woset in your closet?"

This time, no laugh. She looked puzzled.

"Huh," she grunted. "A woset in your closet. Dat’s not funny."

***

When Rose was two-going-on-three, a friend gave us a "Bunny Bowling Set." The bowling balls were little plastic cabbages with which you attempted to knock down plastic rabbit-shaped pins. Jane set the game up and played it for a while, then wandered off. I was in the next room, fixing dinner, and heard Rose playing with the game. But she sounded frustrated. I kept hearing her knock the bunnies over with the ball, and then she’d cry out in dismay.

Finally she hollered, "Mommy! It no WORK!"

I went to watch her try again. She rolled the cabbage and knocked down half the bunnies. I cheered.

"There you go! You’ve got the hang of it now."

She looked at me incredulously. "No! It no work," she said, through gritted teeth.

"Sure it worked!" I said. "Look how many bunnies you hit."

Her glare was steely with pity and forced patience. "It—no—work," she repeated, slowly, as if she were the adult and I the child. "Bunny won’t catch cabbage!"

***

All right, Wonderboy, your turn. Jostle me out of the ruts of adult perception!