“Mom, are spiders insects?” Sophie asks. Inquisitive by nature, my five-year-old is now a month into kindergarten and wants to know everything.

“Yup,” I say.

“Actually, they’re not,” she informs me with what sounds suspiciously like a sneer.

“They’re not?” I ask.

“Nope,” says the little know-it-all. (Well she did just totally set me up.) “Insects only have six legs. Spiders have eight, so they’re arachnids.”

“Insects have six legs?” I ask, wondering where she’s getting her information.

“But why do we have to wear seat belts, mom?” If you have four and six-year-old daughters, you know that every day is an endless, repetitive parade of questions.

“Because it’s the law,” I explain for the eleventy-thousandth time.

“What’s a law?” they demand, for the thirteen-bazillionth time.

“A rule that everyone has to follow,” I drone.

“But what would happen if we didn’t wear our seat belts?” they want to know.

“We could get a ticket, and if we got in an accident you could get very badly hurt.”

“And then you’d be sad?”

I pride myself on feeding my kids a colorful diet of healthy, organic food. In fact, my friends frequently tease me for sending edamame and arugula as snacks to preschool. My daughters have even admitted to choosing playmates for their more-desirable lunchbox offerings. “I sat next to Marley today at lunch because she had Doritos!”

Alas, because I know that forbidding anything usually backfires (and because I do love me a good cheeseburger), my car has been spotted idling near the occasional drive-thru window. I try to wait to tear into my sinfully sloppy burger and greasy fries until we get home, and sometimes I am even successful. I’d never go so far as to tell my children not to tell anyone when we indulge, but on some level I guess I hoped they believed it qualified as deviant behavior and would instinctively keep it on the down-low.

Yeah, right.