I don't want to tell you

Ah, my new favorite saying. And I don't even get to use it myself. These days, about 50% of the time I ask Elisabeth a question along the lines of "what are you doing?" I get the response, "I don't want to tell you." I'm not sure if she thinks she's doing something wrong, or more likely if she just doesn't want me to bug her if it is something "off label."

So today, she walks over and takes a ballpoint pen off of my side table. I've had many things "decorated" with pens, including my piano music (which nearly made me blow steam out of my ears). So I said, "Elisabeth, what are you going to do with that pen?" "I don't want to tell you," she said. So I told her that she could have the pen if she promised only to use it on blank paper. She looked at me blankly, put the pen back, and walked away.

A minute later she popped up and went to grab a thermometer. She sat down with this gumball machine toy we have. I said, "What are you going to do with that thermometer?" "I don't want to tell you." She stuck the thermometer in a screw hole and I said that it wasn't a screwdriver. Before I could finish the sentence with "so don't use it as a screwdriver and break it..." she turns around, looks at me and says, "DOOOON'T look at me Mommy. Just do whatever you have to do. But don't look at me." And then she went back to using that thermometer as a screwdriver. And you know what? I didn't look. Well, ok, I looked. Doug looked. And we snickered when she wasn't looking. Lesson learned - let the kid use household tools as screwdrivers just as long as she doesn't stick them in outlets. What does it matter if she breaks a thermometer every once in awhile?