"Stop!"

This week is "safety awareness" week at Meredith's preschool. She came home yesterday with a sticker on her shirt shaped like a little silver sheriff's badge that said "Seat Belt Patrol", along with something she painted that had a picture of a policeman and said "Obey the Law!". But most importantly, she brought home an "ah-gun".

Come again?

You know, an "ah-gun." She eagerly pointed to a little red stop sign that she made out of construction paper (with sparkles around the edge), mounted on a paper towel roll, and repeated it: "ah-gun".

I asked "What do you want to do again?" -- though she usually says "a-gin" for "again" I thought maybe I just heard her wrong. We had been playing some games with the sign, so maybe she wanted to do something again? The "stop" and "go" game had been legitimately fun, I have to admit....she would hold up the sign and yell " 'TOP! " and we'd have to stop until she said "Go!" again. But we weren't playing a game right then, so something wasn't right.

"Ah-gun" -- her little hand pointed at the stop sign.

I tried my usual maneuvering...."Yeah, that's a stop sign. What does it say? S - T - O - P. Stop! Is that a stop sign?"

"Ah-gun."

Then, once again, Mommy came through for the win.....

"Are you saying that it is an OCTAGON?"

"YEAH!! Ah-gun!!!"

We have a child genius on our hands, folks. Luckily, when she woke up this morning and the first word out of her mouth was "ah-gun" we knew what she wanted.