Beth the stand-up comic/scientist

For months and months and months she's regaled us with knock-knock jokes that have completely random punch lines:

"Knock knock!"

"Who's there?"

"Banana."

"Banana who?"

"Banana pineapple car!"

She's upgraded recently. Her new favorite, which she repeats over and over and over in various forms, is this:

"What did the window say to the other window?"

"I don't know, Beth. What?"

"Silly Mommy! Everyone knows that windows can't talk!"

At least we're laughing at her jokes now. In fact, I still laugh at that one. Her delivery is pretty good, and she gets such a kick out of the joke! (She also gets a kick out of coming up with different inanimate objects to put in the joke, and I can see her working on the analysis.)

She's also head-over-heels in love with the PBS show "Sid the Science Kid." Don't let Beth's fondness for anything pink and princess deceive you — she loves things that move and grow and do things too. I've had a lot of "why" questions recently, including some really annoying not-right-now-Beth ones: "Mommy, why is the toilet clugged?" (Yes, "clugged.")

Science, though: We spent quite a while launching her stuffed sheep around the living room with a lever made out of building blocks, and a few days ago we built a makeshift pulley (basket, string) to lift things up to the top of the playroom jungle gym. The sharing time activity at church yesterday was planting beans in little plastic cups, so we talked all the way home about how a plant grows and that plants use sunlight to make food. And she's been begging me to go back to the Museum of Science, so we're going to have to plan an outing. Dinosaurs were mentioned, but let's be honest with ourselves: there's a good chance we'll end up watching the baby chicks hatch again.