A few weeks back, our whole family went to the art museum to see an exhibition of Curious George paintings. The paintings were neat, but didn’t hold C’s interest as long as they held J’s – so I took him wandering through the rest of the museum.

It wasn’t long before we stumbled upon a very realistic statue of a woman. Fortunately, she was clothed.

She was still startling to C, however. At first he was scared, then he got up the courage to say "hi". She didn’t answer, of course, so he shouted "hi". I shushed him, but once he gets an idea in his head, he’s tough to stop: "Hi! Hello! I said Hi!"

We got that straightened out. It took him a while, but eventually he agreed that she was, in fact, a statue. He really wanted to touch the statue to prove it, but I managed to dissuade him.

We left that room and, as we headed towards a different room, he spotted something and took off running for it: "Statue! Look, look, a statue! Hooray! It’s another statue!"

I would have been impressed – except that he was running towards (and pointing at) a security guard. It took her a moment to realize what was happening, and then she started to laugh. She looked at C and gave a great big smile.

When she moved, C stopped so fast he almost fell over. At first he was scared, but the guard was smiling so nicely, that he laughed, and then shyness took over. He looked at his feet, and then back at me. "No…that’s not a statue. That’s a person."

He walked over to take my hand, and together we said hello to the guard that wasn’t a statue.