Limericks and Hide and Seek

The weekend was nice. We practiced limericks, (Lily had picked up the concept of a rhyme scheme from somewhere, so she was quick to comprehend limericks when I explained that they were an A A B B A rhyme scheme) and we played hide and seek and watched the sun set in a local cemetery.

There was also some awkwardness. The question came up once or twice, but we always managed to deflect it and with Christmas come and gone I thought we were safe until next December. But we were sitting around the house when Lily suddenly asked,  "Daddy, is Santa Claus real?"

"Of course he is," Pause, "Why do you ask that?" and I couldn't go much beyond that, because questioning her about why she was wondering would only cause her to ask more questions.

Her mind is sufficiently like mine that  I could see the wheels turning. I'm not brilliant, but I am persistent in puzzling things out, and if a situation doesn't make sense to me, I keep turning it over in my head until it does. I could see that same remorseless reasoning at work with her, and it made me a little sad. That kind of tenacity serves me well when solving problems, but it has caused me trouble in my personal life, and if she keeps this up, she's going to figure out that Santa doesn't make any sense before she's six, and that's too soon.

I have a really good memory. Lily's may be even better. We had watched an episode of Batman: Brave & the Bold about four months ago, with Booster Gold and his robot Skeets. She liked it okay, but didn't ask to watch it again as she sometimes does with other shows, so we sent it back to Netflix and I didn't think about it again.
 

We were watching the Legion of Super Heroes last week and Lily said "Hey! It's Batman's friend's robot!" I've included the time stamp at the bottom of the image. You can click to embiggen, but Skeets is on the screen for no more than four seconds. I didn't catch that the first time I saw the episode. I only know about it because I read some trivia on the Internet movie database. But that's some impressive recall right there.

She keeps trying to get me to wear a monocle too. I can't remember if I've mentioned it here, but my vision is odd. My right eye is 20/15 and doesn't need corrective lenses and the left is over 20/200, which is the threshold for legal blindness. So I've got one pane of window glass and one with a heavy prescription. I mentioned this once to Lily and she totally seized on it. She asked if both my eyes needed glasses and I knew she wouldn't be asking the question if she didn't know the answer. So I played along with her leading questions and she eventually came out with what she was hinting at, that I shouldn't wear glasses over both eyes if I only need them for one. And I don't know what her fascination is with monocles. Maybe she's in love with Mr. Peanut.