"Can I check my email?"

Caroline asks me this more than once a day pretty much every day. Whenever we're at the library, which has been quite often lately, and I'm whisking her through the big room towards the children's section, she pauses and pulls me almost to a stop at the computer station and says, "Can I check my email?"

And she'll do this more than once in a given library visit. At the library I always say, "No, not right now." But the other day on the way home from the library she asked if she could check her email on my computer when we got home. In an effort to not always go with my initial reaction and say "no" I said, "Sure--but, Caroline, why do you need to check your email?"

"I need to see what my baby brother's name is going to be."

?? (No, we're not expecting, by the way.)

So at home I pulled up Word and let her type. She loved pointing out letters and pushing the keys, but she also wanted to use the mouse and soon I found that she had opened a lot of my computer programs by clicking on them. I let her play around for a while and ended the session before she could ask to go on pbskids.org.

All of this leads me to a very exciting announcement: Caroline is going to have a for-real email address and she would be tickled pink to get for-real emails. If you want to write her a note for me to read to her, send it to ecarolinecarlson@yahoo.com.

She would be soooo excited if I told her she had an email to check. :)