It is no secret that I did not love the fourth year of my children’s’ lives. It was a really tough year, full of instances of expanding independence. So far, it has been the only part of their lives that I truly despised.
The good news is that age 5 is already so much better!! The girls are much easier to get along with, generally, and are so much more fun to be around. One of the new “fun things” has been the appearance of “Why?” in our conversations. We totally skipped the 3-year-old version of this question. This version is so much more pleasant, and thought provoking, than I understand the 3-year-old version to be. It even gets kind of funny sometimes (I wish I had done a better job of recording those) and a lot harder to answer. Here are some examples:
We went ice-skating for the first time today (I’ll tell you about that once Dig sends me pictures). We had a pretty good time, and were still talking about it at the dinner table. I was relaxed and enjoying the conversation. Then they blindsided me!
“Mommy, why is there ice to skate on? How do they keep it cold? And how do we get snow?”
One would think that a former Biology and Environmental Science teacher could field this one without a problem. Yeah, sure if it was a group of kids who had an inkling of an understanding of evaporation and condensation.
Why is it that Daddy always misses these conversations?
So I handled it with something about how the freezer keeps stuff frozen and the ice rink uses something like that to keep the skating area frozen. It went pretty well so I was feeling confident about the snow question. I trotted out my best, entry-level explanation of evaporation and condensation.
And my two dear children put me in my place!
Seems we have been paying attention to the lovely science programs that Mommy finds on our British satellite (SO going to miss the BBC). It seems they already kind of “get” the concept. All I had to do was explain what happens in the atmosphere to make the water turn into snow. Pretty easy – it gets cold.
And they were both perfectly satisfied.
If only the why question from earlier in the day was as easy to answer. I got the “Why does Dig have a baby in her tummy? How did it get there?”
4 comments:
Same principle still works, keep it simple. :)
Glad you had a fun day. I think kids always like to blindside you with the tough ones.
As I told you yesterday, I'm just glad it's your kids asking and not mine! lol
For whatever reason I'm not scared to answer the questions. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I'm so nosy/curious that I can appreciate that quality in my equally nosy/curious daughter.
Can you just keep me in your prayers as SA turns 4 in 2 weeks?! I can't imagine 4 being harder than 3.
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