And so it’s time once again to go back and look at some of the conversations I had with her when she was even younger. On May 2, I published some of the conversations we had when she was 4. Let’s go back another year, and look at what we spoke about when she was 3.

1. Three year old Joan had a wonderful time at her birthday party today in spite of the fact that sometime during the party, she and her 3 year old friend Noah announced to everyone that they were leaving and going to a playground.
2. Three year old Joan’s birthday party was in full swing in the family room and breakfast room. Everyone was having a good time. Joan wandered into the living room and sat on the piano bench. An adult saw her and asked what she was doing. She looked up and answered simply: “I just need a little alone time”.
3. At the Zoo, Joan says hello to the orangutan. No response. The woman next to her says “Maybe he speaks Spanish.” Joan looks at her and says “Maybe Hebrew”.
4. Three year old Joan spent some time watching the wolf at the Zoo. “This is not the Big Bad Wolf”, she told me.
5. Three year old Joan says some surprising things. “Can we go to the dentist every day?” Her mother responds: “No, but every six months.” But Joan was not satisfied: “Every five months?”
6. I tell Joan that I have known one of our Shabbat guests for 58 years. She responded: “That’s really a lot of years”.
7. When Edie and I drove three year old Joan to her house from preschool, there was a lull in the conversation. Apparently, Joan, like nature, abhors a vacuum, so she turned to her grandmother and, in a serious tone of voice, said: “Tell me about your work.”
8. Three year old Joan stayed at our house Friday night. Saturday I went out and brought in the two newspapers that get delivered to our house. Joan, who knows everything, looked at the newspapers and said: “What’s that?”
9. I have a pair of painted duck decoys that three year old Joan seems to have developed a relationship with. Friday night, she brought them to the dinner table to show one of our guests, and put them next to his plate. He moved to pick one of them up. Joan said: “No, you can’t touch them.” “Why?”, he asked. She responded: “Because they might swim away”. I reminded her that she had just touched them. She was ready for that, too. “The zookeeper is allowed to touch them, and I am the zookeeper”.
10. I say something to three year old Joan. She says “you’re joking”. Edie compliments Joan on knowing I was joking and says: “your G-pa jokes a lot”. I ask her “is that good or bad?” She looks at me and says: “Baaaad”.
11. On good authority: Her Aunt Michelle asks Joan: “want to come to my pool next weekend?” Joan responds: “I have already been there.”
12. When faced with a dinner of eggplant stew and tortellini, Joan says calmly: “May I have a Popsicle?”
13. Why does three year old Joan ride the bunny rabbit and not the horse on the Glen Echo carousel? “Because they don’t go up and down”.
14. “How do you spell Joan?” “J O A N” “How do you spell hippopotamus? “J O A N”.
15. Three year old Joan wanted to drive today and tried to turn on the car. But because she couldn’t reach the brake, the car wouldn’t start. I told her she wouldn’t be able to start the car until she reached a certain size. She responded: “I AM a certain size”.
16. Looking to show her affection, Joan tells her father: “I love you the worst.”
17. Three year old Joan explains how her four month old cousin fits in. “He is on my side of the family”, she says.
18. Three year old Joan sadly realizes she will never be a princess. Why? “Princesses have straight hair.”
19. Three year old Joan bolts out a complex rendition of “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More, No More”, with a long riff containing references to Dinah in her kitchen, e-i-e-i-o, and various other things. I ask her if she wrote the song herself. “No”, she said, “someone posted it to me. They instagrammed it to be on my phone.”
20. Me to three year old Joan: “What did you have for lunch?” Joan: “Watermelon and cactus”.