"You could tell them."

"If we had a house with only one room for entertaining then we would have to tell them."

She accepts this explanation and investigates the contents of her room.

Her room has a bed and a bookshelf with age-appropriate books on the reachable shelves and books for older children on the taller shelves. There are bins full of puzzles and games and blocks and toys. One wall has a miniature apartment building with apartments with dolls of all hair colors. Next to her bed are stuffed animals and soft blankets. There's a closet full of clothes.

She decides via some inscrutable process that this is acceptable probably.

"How come you decided to adopt me?" she asks. "I asked the people if I could just go somewhere myself and they said no, I had to be adopted."

"If you went somewhere by yourself you would have a hard time earning money and finding food and a place to stay. People who would like to have a baby but cannot have one themselves go on a list to get a baby if there is a baby in need of parents."

"I can talk. They decided I am one, not a baby, because I can talk."

"You talk very well. But there is no list for adopting one-year-olds because it almost never happens."

"Oh." Pause. "I didn't know what parents were when I woke up in the basket, they had to tell me."

"That must have been confusing."

"Yes. I don't know what other things I don't know that everyone knows."

"One-year-olds are not expected to know everything. You can ask us lots of questions and we'll try to explain things to you."

"Okay. What are your names?"

"I am Kan Neli and he's Aitim Neli. Neli is a job name; it is the job name for people who want to hold national office."

"Wanting to do that is a job?"

"There are lots of jobs which are jobs for people who want to learn the skills they will need to do that eventually, and the job name goes with those."

"Oh."

"You will probably pick a job name when you are four or five."

"Okay. How do people decide?"

"People will come to your school to talk about what they do and what you have to be good at to do it, and you might do short practice jobs do see which ones you like, and you can read books where people talk about their jobs and what they did, and then you can decide. Some people change many times, some people do one thing their whole lives."

Nod.

"Do you know if you know how to read?"

"I can read."

"Then I bet your books will be helpful for learning things you don't know."

Nod, nod. What books has she got?