"Nothing, Mom!"

Sophie is very project-oriented.

Unfortunately, the projects she decides to take on generally are in direct opposition with our goals for the household.

Like, how coloring on the walls in the hallway with our new bathtub crayons is, you know, at odds with my goal to keep our walls, well, un-crayoned.

Or how her plan to sneak all the keys off the key holder and hide them in the couch cushions kind of derails our ability to...um...know where our keys are at. Thus making it tough for us to lock things. And unlock them.

Or how her tendency to take all of the half-dollar sized discs from our Connect Four Launcher game and stick them between her toes and walk throughout the house on her heels makes it difficult for us to a) keep track of all those game pieces and b) not fear that our daughter is a total nutjob.

I mean, where does she come up with this???

She's the kind of kid you have to keep a pretty close eye on. Five minute stretches when you haven't heard from her means you're likely to find her in the bathroom squirting cucumber-melon hand soap all over the counter so she could 'clean it'.

She's good about cleaning up her projects, thankfully -- but she hasn't yet mastered the art of distinguishing which activities are appropriate for a three-year-old to engage in, and which are perilously close to getting us a visit from the fire marshal.

The thing is, she's well aware when she's doing something she probably shouldn't.

Like the other day, when I walked out of my bedroom and past the upstairs bathroom, and out of the corner of my eye noticed Sophie leaning over the bathtub, doing something. I didn't know quite what, probably trying to shove quarters down the drain or something, but hadn't even had a chance yet to get a word out of my mouth -- when she heard me behind her, startled, spun around, looked up at me, and declared, "Nothing, Mom!"

This is her standard response lately. When I walk into the kitchen and she's pushing a kitchen chair up to the key hanger on the wall (so that's how she got Ben's server-room key), and I say "Sophie, what do you need that chair for?"

"Nothing, Mom!"

When she's eating her snack at the table and I see her dipping something in her milk (is that her cheese stick? or my iPod?) and I say, "Sophie! Don't put things in your milk! What IS that?"

"Nothing, Mom!"

So, we're gonna have to nip this in the bud somehow. Without stifling her insane creativity and adventerous spirit.

Something tells me she'll be alright.