questions and answers

So my husband and I have sort of an ongoing joke with our middle child. Don't get me wrong, Will is a really awesome, bright kid, who I adore. However, he's not always the most observant one in our family. For example: we were on vacation in June and it had been raining pretty hard for at least 20 minutes. Will looks up and says, "it's raining?" Another example: yesterday, Tom went to work actually OUT of the house, and in the afternoon we were playing outside and I see Tom coming down the street. I say, "Look, here comes Dad." Meredith starts yelling "Da! Da! Da!" over and over while Tom is driving down the street (probably 10-15 seconds worth). Tom pulls in the driveway and Will says, "Mom! Dad's home! Dad's home!" Really? I hadn't noticed.

Will is constantly unaware of what day it is, whether it's a school day or the weekend, what season it might be (I joked with him the other day and said, "it's Christmas!" He replied with "Really?!"). I just don't know whether he's just really unaware or just THAT trusting.

So today, TJ comes downstairs with his school calculator that I had asked him to find (in a strange, out of body experience of being TOTALLY un-Jen yesterday, I went out and got most of the school supplies and put them all in the kids' new backpacks so it would be DONE. Will kept telling me, "Mom, I think we have more than enough time to do this later. We have almost a month.") so we wouldn't have to think about it any more. When I told TJ to just put it in his new backpack with his other school supplies, Will says, "Is today the first day of school?" Of course I immediately said no, but Tom suggested that I should have said yes, just to screw with him. I KNOW that his reply would have been "NOOOOOOO!!!".

I guess I LIKE the fact that he's always asking questions, but I just don't get how he can't seem to ever have any concept of what's actually happening. I know there are other kids out there that are the same way, I have friends that have told me as much. Maybe it's a middle child thing? All the kids I can think of that are like this are middle kids. I'm just afraid of that one day when I won't be the source of the answer to his questions. Sigh.