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That was a fair bargain, I supposed. A piece of information for a piece of breakfast. She was getting both.
Thinking she was going to be outsmarting me, she took an atom sized bite of the thing and inflated her cheeks to make it look like she had a mouthful. This was a trick she managed to learn while she was here, and she got away with it many times with Alessandro, but she could fool neither me nor her grandmother.
"Heh," I chuckled. I then used a fork's prong to line out a particular area of the sandwich. "Take off this area..." I said over her distraught whine. "...and I'll tell you what nature is."
"It's not fair, mama!" she protested.
"Really, we have to talk about what you call me now." I tried to stir her from the topic of nature while I secretly googled it. "Is it mommy or mama?" I giggled.
"It's both, mama." She twisted her head to analyze the angle she attacked the sandwich I gave her from. "When I'm happy, it's mommy. When I'm mad, it's mama."
"Huh."
"This is more than one bite, mama." She looked offensively at me. Of course, I charted for at least three bites.
"No, baby. It's one bite. You just have a small mouth." I pinched her cheeks and gave her a reassuring smile, but she wasn't buying it.
"But...but...if I have a small mouth, shouldn't I be given a small bite?"
Hmmmm. Valid point for her young age. I was almost at a loss for words.
"Well, there's no way you'll grow big like mommy if you keep taking small bites. You wanna be big like mommy?" I asked her and she nodded meekly.
Another motherly mission accomplished. I mentally high fived myself for not falling into the embarrassment of losing an argument to a three-year-old but at the same time, my head swelled with pride for the smart ass my daughter was growing to become. She was going to dominate her environmental sphere and beyond. I could see it.
"So, mama. Who's nature then?"
Okay, phase two of not falling prey to ignorance of the question of a toddler started fast. What I saw on Google, definitely wasn't going to be of any immediate use to her still forming brain.
"Not who, Artemis. What." I found myself speaking almost out of my own accord.
"What?" she tilted her head in confusion.
"Yes, baby. What is nature?" I confirmed.
"Oh."
"So, you see this bed," I shook the points of the mattress that I could, making her jiggle a little in her bed. "See that window?" I pointed over to it and she followed my hands. "Everything that is in this room has been made by man. That's not nature." I told her.
"Well, what is it then?" She seemed to be getting frustrated with my beating around the bush with my 'unnecessary' explanation. Little did she know it would all come together in the end.
"Well, do you see the birds outside on that pole?"
"Uh huh."
"That's nature."
"Really? Birds are nature?" she asked with excitement, and I knew instantly that she had gotten the wrong interpretation of what I said.
"Not just birds, sweetie. All animals as well. And plants, trees, rocks..." I tried to salvage the matter, finally understanding why I would never have allowed myself to teach.
"Those are nature, because they were made without humans."
"Aliens?" She looked at me, hoping she had finally grasped it, but I shook my head, disappointing her again.
"No, darling. They all were just here before we came to be. Nature is what made all those things that humans didn't make," I cheaply explained, hoping that it was a simple enough concept to grasp.
"Daddy says it's God that made all those things," she pointed out. "And us too."
