Last night at dinner Megan was asking me why Daddy had to work late. I explained to her that he had to take a phone call from someone who was in a different time zone - which of course led to the next obvious question from her. "What's a time zone?" I began explaining what it was and how it worked to which she replied that it all sounded a little silly.
So I decided to make it a bit more interesting and told her how her cousin in Japan was already waking up on Friday morning even though we were only eating dinner here on Thursday. Her eyes got big, she laughed and said, "now that's just freaky!"
Matt isn't much better these days and seems to constantly be asking "why?" to anything he possible can. (I thought that was a 2 year old stage - not something a 4 year goes through.) I appreciate that he's simply trying to comprehend the big world around him but I have to admit that it drives me up the wall a lot of the time. Mostly because the "why's" seem to be an automatic conversation reflex after a while and not really a legitimate question. But then there are times when he simply cracks me up with his simplistic logic behind what can be a complex issue for a 4 year old.
For example; this morning Matt found one of our cats in the backyard torturing a squirrel. From what I could tell, the squirrel had a broken back or something as it dragged itself away from Gipper. And as Matt watched, Gipper batted the squirrel around a bit more and then finally grabbed it by the throat and rag-dolled it a bit. The questions from Matt just came rolling out about why Gipper would do such a thing. I didn't want to pretend that the cat was just "playing" because, hey, you can't coddle your children forever. But I also didn't want to play out the slaying of the creature with too much drama and end up scarring his little brain forever. He seemed satisfied with my answers at first until he finally said, "why can't he just eat his own food instead of eating squirrels and mice?"
My response was that Gipper is an animal and that's just what some animals do. To which he replied, "Gipper's not an animal!"
Ok, so now how do you explain that an animal is a creature and not what we refer to he and his sister as when they are acting crazy? (And I knew for a fact that my answer would lead to the next question of what is a creature?) So I explained it by saying, why don't you ask your Daddy.
(Hey, I'm home with the kid all day, every day now. You can't expect Daddy to get out of answering some of these important questions!)
3 comments:
Time zone's do sound silly.. You almost need a lightbulb and a globe to explain it :-)
Why Why Why.. my 8 year old step son is FULL of questions...
ps..how is your brother?
Well a lightbulb and a globe would have made more sense than me holding up my fists and saying, "imagine that this is the sun and this is the earth..." and then trying to tie my arms in knots as I displayed how the earth revolves around the sun, blah blah blah.
As for my brother - he's in the middle of bi-weekly chemo treatments right now. He's hit hard with fatigue, nausea and chemo brain but he's pulling through it. His last treatment will be in September and it seems like such a long way off. (Thank you for asking, by the way.)
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