Curiosity & the Cat Part - II

My last post found me rediscovering the natural curiosity of Sissy and being both ecstatic about and overwhelmed by it.
An attempt at a similar conversation with Peanut resulted in a misunderstanding and a great one-liner for the end of my post.
This post is, in part, about the rest of the conversation with Peanut.
After I realized that I had been unclear, I took the time to put into context what I was asking her. Then she, very much like her sister, fired off a list of questions faster than I could write them down, including:

How do scuba diving suits work....especially the flippers? How do flippers make you swim better?
How do astronaut suits make you float in space?
(The first question I was able to answer on the spot ! They don't. Lack of gravity makes you float in space. Astronaut suits just keep you alive while you're floating. )
If you get eaten by something, will you go to heaven, or will you just stay in the animal or whatever-ate-you-up's stomach forever?
(The only other question I was able to answer on the spot).
Why do little girls love baby dolls so much?
How does the computer save your game? I don't mean a CD game, I mean on the Internet, when you tell it your password and your game comes up where you left off before? How does it DO that?
Why do softballs have to be bigger than baseballs and T-balls?
How do cameras work?
(ME: You mean digital cameras or.....upon seeing Peanut's blank expression, I answer myself ...yes, you mean digital).

I think what amazed me more than anything is the variety of topics they wanted to know more about, and how freely the questions flew once the door was opened. It makes me wonder what else goes on inside their little heads.

It also inspired me to put into black-and-white, some questions I've had myself recently like:

1. Considering the condition of "official religions" of certain countries - religions that are publicly endorsed by the government, not to mention those that are mandated by the government, not to mention the practices of the Puritan settlers of this country, not to MENTION we just elected a President who many believe has been, directly or not, influenced by Islam ........

is separation of church and state REALLY a bad thing?

2. If nobody here has OCD, how come there's never any toilet paper?

3. Why did the Founding Fathers sign a document in 1776 that declared ".....all men are created equal....." , only to sign another document a few years later which , in very cleverly disguised wording , stated that slaves would be counted as "three-fifths of one person". Oh I know it was the result of the Great Compromise. But 200+ years later when schoolchildren are studying these documents side-by-side .... it doesn't look good, guys. That's all I'm sayin'.

4. If I have to go gray, why can't I just wake up one day looking like Emmylou Harris?

5. What was the earliest Christian church really like? How did they worship? Were there musical instruments? Did the congregation applaud after special music? Was there charismatic -type freedom of worship? Or was the atmosphere more formal and solemn? Was there an altar call? How many times a week did they meet? Was there age-separated Bible instruction or did they all meet together?

6. Whatever happened to my Mary Poppins board game? I've already asked my mother and she doesn't know.

7. Why do stomach viruses always hit at night?

Wow, I can see now how it's possible to have a bunch of interests on the back-burner of your mind at the same time.

Oh, I started chipping away at Sissy's list and I learned something.

Mood rings?

Liquid crystal, color-sensitive to body temperature. They can't tell what kind of mood you're in at all. Who knew ;)

Did Curiosity Kill The Cat.....

...or did it just send her into hiding? .....and what part did the cat's mother play in it all?

I found out something exciting about Sissy today. Apparently, she has questions. There are things she wonders about. I know, it doesn't sound exciting in print but if you knew Sissy .....
let me just back up a bit.

From sometime around age five to six, Sissy was brimming over with curiosity about the world around her. It was really intoxicating to watch. The backyard, the bathtub, the kitchen sink .... they were all her classrooms. She learned so much by playing .... you could just see the wheels turning in her head. She was also constantly asking questions. It was like her mission in life was to gain as much information as possible about everything under the sun.

At some point though, she stopped asking questions. Or maybe she just slowed way down. At any rate, she stopped being the curious little girl full of wide-eyed wonder at the world.
What happened to that little girl?
Was she outgrowing a stage of development in which natural inquisitiveness is at its peak?
Was it -- oh Lord, no -- was it MY doing?
Shamefully, I remember begging her to hold off on the questions for awhile before Mommy's head exploded. I had given her the all too easy "I don't know" more times than I wanted to count.
Maybe in our homeschool, I had steered too traditional. In my heart of hearts, I was all for delight-directed learning, but I know myself and how distractible and airbrained I can be, and I had to have a routine.... had I become such a slave to it that I squashed Sissy's love of learning?

After today, I can thankfully say, "No!"

It began when I was looking at a Magic Schoolbus Question and Answer book with Sissy, and I said something benign and cheesy like -
"It's fun to learn new stuff, isn't it?"
She agreed it was.
Then, I said something that I would have thought my kids already knew..... in fact, I don't even know why I said it.... but I hugged her to me and said ...
"You know, if you ever have questions about anything, I mean ANYTHING, you know you can ask me. I may not know all the answers, but I'll try to help you find them."

She pulled away from me looking as though I had just given her a gift-wrapped box.
"Ohhh good!", she said. "Because I have a LOT of questions!"

"Really?... Oh... OK....umm, let's see.... ". There happened to be some paper and a pen lying nearby so I reached for it somewhat nervously (I hadn't expected her to start right NOW) and told her to shoot.

And in rapid-fire succession, as if they had waiting, crowded together behind an unopened door, the questions tumbled out into the open.

"How does a mood ring work?"
"How does medicine help you get better?"
"How does a music CD work?"
"How do they read the bar codes on foods and other things, and anyway what are the bar codes for?"
"How do we get water in our faucet?"
"How does electricity get through the wires?"

Here, she stopped to let my writing catch up.

"OK then, is that all?" I looked up.

"No, I've also been wondering .....
How does a thermometer work? How do you make trees into paper? How does heat get through the register into our rooms? I used to think the heat came from the air outside, but in wintertime it's cold outside, so I don't know .... also how does a spinning wheel make wool into yarn? How do shampoo and soap make you clean? How do you get the meat out of animals so you can eat it? How do computers, TV, and videocameras work? How does a piano work?
Also a violin. How does a violin work? I mean how can you just touch a string with something and get beautiful sound like that?"

Oh wow. My head was reeling. I had evidently opened up a floodgate and now, I was drowning in the rushing torrent. But I could have cried with excitement. She was still in there! My little sponge, my curious girl! I hugged her again and breathed in her smell.
"I've missed you so much", I whispered.

"What'd you say Mommy?"

Hmm? Oh, nothing. Hey if you've been wondering all these things, why didn't you ever ask me before?

She shrugged her shoulders and said breezily, "I just keep forgetting!"

I was really impressed at the list. They were good questions. In fact, with the exception of the mood ring mystery, they were all very practical, questions about things that surround her every day.... and hey, I've always wondered about mood rings myself.

She took the pen and paper and went off to add still more questions to the list. I think we're going to have to draw one question from a jar and answer it before we tackle any more.

On a whim, or maybe feeling like a glutton for punishment, I found Peanut.

"You know, I just found out that there are a lot of things your sister wants to know more about. What about you? Is there anything you've been wondering?"

"Well...." she thought a few seconds. "Well I HAVE been wondering if I'm going to get a Nintendo DS for my birthday."

I can always count on that kid for a punchline.

The Sky is Falling But I'll Be OK

A year or two ago we came to the realization that the Weather Channel was getting too much airtime at our house.

The same ads play over and over, (unmute it Mommy it's the Head-On commercial!), the weather forecast is shown every ten minutes, and the same Weather Channel programs are promoted about as frequently. We tolerated this because we are creatures of habit, and watching The Weather Channel was like a draw from a Marlboro Light to a two-pack-a-dayer.

Then one day when the TV wasn't even on, Peanut came to me, visibly upset, and said,

"Mommy, I'm afraid it's going to happen tomorrow!".

When I asked what she was afraid would happen tomorrow, she very worriedly said, "I don't know but The Weather Channel keeps saying "It Could Happen Tomorrow", and I'm afraid it will!".

Around this time we remembered that both Peanut and Sissy had nervously voiced concerns about unlikely but scary weather phenomena like avalanches and tidal waves. That's when we knew we had hit rock-bottom. So we didn't watch the Weather Channel on TV after that. It was actually pretty easy... we knew we could get a quick fix by going to weather.com, and a quick fix was usually all we needed anyway.

Peanut's fear of the unknown impending crisis disappeared and the general mood around here has been less heavy. It's funny how continuous previews of natural disasters can drag you down.

I wonder though, if in the interest of allaying her fears, we have gone too far in the opposite direction. The other morning, because of some buzz about winter weather and potential schedule changes, The Weather Channel made a temporary comeback on our TV.

Peanut watched an ad for "Storm Trackers" or some other such program in which huge, dark funnel clouds are shown barreling down on unsuspecting buildings while a dramatic male voice intones things like, "Is this town prepared for the worst catastrophe in its history?!?"

And when it was over, she turned to me and asked me what would happen to her if she got sucked up in a tornado..... and while I was wondering how to answer her, she laughingly said this:

"Oh I know what would happen. It would spin me around and around, and when it set me down again, I would be really, REALLY dizzy".

So she has a psychological cushion now - a sort of internal guideline that says: When mentally placing yourself in the most dangerous scenario imaginable, minor injuries are all you may allow yourself to incur - and you should always give yourself a way out.

Whatever. I'm not messing with it.