Recently, Finn has been very interested in understanding which parts of books, games and movies are fantasy and which are reality. Sometimes the distinction is complicated: "Are there dinosaurs in the real world?" Well, no, but there used to be. "Are unicorns extinct, too?" Well, no, they never were real. Sometimes it's more straightforward: "Are there really ferris wheels?" What, he thinks the fair we went to (less than a month ago!) might just be a really good dream? Distinguishing fantasy creatures from real animals definitely seems to be a recurring theme.
The kids have decided that, after we pay for the house addition (I'm so glad they're on board with the idea of a bigger house or saving would be much more difficult), they'd like to save money to go on a family vacation via airplane. Next stop, Mars. I told them that one might be a little out of our league, savings-wise, but they were fairly adamant. Larkin thought I was quite the killjoy: "I mean, all we need is a ship that can keep us alive during the trip and some kind of collapsible structure we can set up to keep air in when we get there!" Well, when you put it that way...
Other interesting conversations today: Why dark colors absorb heat and light colors reflect it, why sometimes it's better to draw people without noses, what an owl pellet is, why casseroles aren't very good before they've been baked even if you're really really hungry, why i might prefer to have washable marker washed off of the bottoms of hands and feet before said hands and feet scale the furniture, whether or not we'll adapt well to city living for a few months, why goggles don't work very well when some hair is trapped under them.
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This was an amusing stage for Larkin too, as it coincided with lots of "Infinite Questions" games (just like 20 questions with no limits.) It was quite a conundrum to answer things like "is it alive" when the "it" in question is, say, an imaginary creature from a work of fiction.
ReplyDeleteAlso questions about size are amusingly complicated by perceptual questions: is the sun bigger than me? No, it's about as big as the end of my thumb. (Holding up hand) See?
Does Finn like unicorns? Cuz, if so, you should totally buy him this beauty: http://www.etsy.com/listing/45380561/red-unicorn-star-patch-hoodie?ref=v1_other_2
ReplyDeleteLarkin's attitude re space travel sounds a lot like the have spacesuit, will travel mindset from early 20th century sci-fi. A young Arthur C. Clarke made a pretty similar comment to Lord Dunsany about our prospects of reaching the moon: http://www.sfsite.com/09a/cor40.htm
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