Yesterday, I took our three-year-old (soon to be four) out to run some errands while his older brother went to a birthday party. We had a good time, especially once I stopped using the word “errands” and started using the word “missions”.

Afterwards, I treated the little guy to an ice cream at Brusters – a walk up ice cream place. We purchased a couple cones – free for him because he’s less than 40 inches tall – and grabbed a bench to munch and talk.

As we were crunching away the last bites of our cones, he grabbed my arm. “I’m thirsty, daddy!”

“Thirsty?”

He gestured wildly with his hands “So thirsty!”

“Umm…” I looked up at the menus glued to the inside of Bruster’s windows. As far as I could see, no drinks were listed at all. “I don’t think they have anything here, but we’re heading home next and we can get some water there.”

“But I’m thirsty!”

“I’m sorry about that, but there’s nothing I can do. They don’t have any drinks here.”

He tried to hide his smile. “They have milkshakes. They’re drinks.”

I stood up. “No! You just had an ice cream cone!”

“But I’m thirsty!”

“Me too. Let’s go to the grocery store and pick up some carrot juice.”

“Nooo!” He flopped dramatically over, like a puppet with its strings cut. “Milk Shakes!”

We’ve never had carrot juice. It was just the nastiest sounding juice I could think to bring up. After some discussions about carrot juice versus milk shakes, we decided to ask if Bruster’s had any lemonade. They did, so we split one.

It was delicious.