Do we have to have these arguments?

And other stupid things I say. I don’t even know why I say them when the answer is obvious and repetitive. 

I am aware that having a child is like someone holding up a small frustrating mirror displaying your worse qualities and then telling you that you are not allowed to strangle it but the one we have seemed to get a double helping of smart ass and not only our combined stubbornness but also all of her ancestors as well. Trying to put her to bed is a form of mindfulness training that should be banned under the Geneva convention and don’t get me started on brushing her teeth. 

If I have to hear about how ‘spicy’ the mild mint toothpaste is one more time I will scream and I am, to this day I’m not sure what she expected the strawberry one to taste like but apparently it wasn’t strawberries. 

Still reading a bedtime story should be straightforward enough right? Wrong. We have a set of books that, as I imagine most parents do; that we can recite from memory. These range from the ridiculously short (The Flying Bath) to the ridiculously long (I had trouble getting to Solla Sollew) to the plain ridiculous (The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner). We choose the book based on the time we have available and how awake she seems. One of the books starts “It’s morning, everyone’s gone”. I dutifully started my recitation only to be interrupted by a chirrup from the bed of 

“But what if it was afternoon?”. Now that kind of question can really throw one. When I informed her that the book was set in the morning, she huffed and insisted 

“But what if it was afternoon?”

I told her I didn’t know, this family may have been in and therefore the bath couldn’t have gone flying which would have been bad news for the kangaroo, bees, baboon and fish. Also the pig would still need a bath.I then tried to continue. This too wasn’t accepted as it wasn’t a definitive answer. So once again four words into the story

”But what if it was afternoon?” 

At which point, I sighed and read Superworm instead. 

Why do I have to have arguments like this? More importantly does anyone have an answer because I haven’t dared read a book with a definite time frame since.