The Age of reason(ing)

All of a sudden, C. (who turns 3 in May) has started making counter-arguments. He woke up first from his nap yesterday, and I asked him to be quiet, so as not to wake up G. "But Van isn't being quiet," he said. Easy to defend (but difficult to explain to a nearly 3-year-old). And when we were at a party at a house with a big yard out back on Sunday, C. tried to tell his dad to go inside. "The other kids don't have their dads outside with them." True. But the next-youngest kid was twice his age, and most likely had enough sense not to try to drag a big toy with wheels up a ladder and send it down the slide, or some such stunt C. was sure to have on his clever but judgement-impaired/developing mind. I love when he exposes his thought process through these arguments. It makes me anxious for G. to get beyond "cat" and "banana".