Toddler brains are weird.

Today E and I were at the park, playing on the jungle gym with a big wheel that we pretend is a ship. I asked her where she wanted to go, and gave her some options off of the top of my head: Tahiti, Fiji, Oklahoma...

"Mama! Oklahoma! Go Oklahoma!"

Thinking that she thought it sounded like "home", I said "Do you want to go home now?"

"No, Mama! Go Oklahoma! Go Oklahoma NOW PLEASE!!!"

Hmm. Sooo...disappoint the kid or lie to her? Lie it is.

"Okay babe. Now I'm not sure where Oklahoma is, so we'll have to walk around a bit and look for it."

I had to go to the grocery store anyway, and we had about five blocks for me to figure out what to do about our Oklahoma-lemma. She walked better than she ever has before, hardly getting distracted at all from her "Where Oklahoma go, mama?" mantra. Finally, when we were a block away and I was considering the implications of telling her that a) we lost Oklahoma or b) Oklahoma is where we buy our produce, she stopped dead in front of the children's shoe store.

"Mama! Oklahoma in there!" Sweet. In we went. We strolled around and she picked up the odd shoe, snuggled the toy Pooh bear that is there to distract fidgety toddlers, and when I asked "Did you have fun in Oklahoma? Are you ready to say goodbye?", she waved at the store and said "Bye Oklahoma! See you next time!" and followed me out the door.

The whole thing was right out of the twilight zone. But it made an impression on her. When I was getting her pj's on tonight I asked her what her favourite part of the day was...you guessed it:

"OKLAHOMA!!!"