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Today started out with a very, and I mean very, impromptu lesson about hurricanes. I assure you I was in no way prepared to explain what a hurricane was. My explanation started to come out something like this “You know a hurricane is a storm in the ocean and the air pushes up and the other air pushes down and then it spins and there are clouds and wind and oh my God I’m not a meteorologist let’s go find something on Youtube before you realize I have no idea what I’m talking about.” So we found a kid-friendly (also dumb parent friendly) explanation about exactly how hurricanes form and he seemed satisfied with that.
I also put “learn more about weather and stuff” on my to-do list. Don’t judge me.
A little later in the day we went on a “nature” walk around our neighborhood, where he thankfully did not ask anymore weather-related questions. We live in a subdivision, so we weren’t exactly immersed in nature, but we still found a lot of it on our walk. The biggest hit was a pile of acorns that we carried home. Correction. That I carried home. Because he was so tired. He was also irritated with me toward the end of our walk because I didn’t bring anything for him to lie down on when he got tired. I kid you not. He said that to me. I’m so sorry that I didn’t think to bring a cot with us on a walk around the neighborhood. I really didn’t think I was going to be the cause of all his problems until he was a teenager. I was wrong.
I swear those fingernails were clean earlier today
Our walk was actually really fun, despite my lapse in judgement in not bringing somewhere for him to nap. We told lots of knock-knock jokes and made up rhymes and picked dandelions out of people’s yards. Oh and we crunched lots of leaves and jumped over just about every stick in the road. We also tried to outrun our shadows, but they were too fast. We were both a little relieved to finally make it up the big hill to our house though. He got his tendency to overheat from me. Sorry, kid.
We relaxed a little bit after the walk, and I made my final decision on whether I was going to introduce anything about 9/11 today. I had been looking for some kind of resource that felt appropriate for him, but was coming up empty-handed. I really did not want to show him actual pictures or footage from that day, since he tends toward the more sensitive side of things and it just didn’t feel right for him at this time. I was beginning to lean toward not bringing it up today, but then I found this video and it was exactly what I wanted. It’s short, to the point, and is explained in very kid-friendly terms. It is Christian-based, so if you aren’t interested in that aspect you can turn the video off after the 1:50 mark.
9-11 video from Noël Hale on Vimeo.
I tried not to, but I cried while we watched the video together. I cried for what happened that day and I cried for my kid, who seems so wonderfully innocent, having to learn about the evil mankind can do. I wish I could just protect him from that forever, but since I can’t, I’ll opt to ease him into it the best I can. I think I’m doing an okay job so far.
I needed to pull myself together a little bit after that so I asked Wyatt if he wanted to turn something happy on Netflix. He excitedly picked a movie I’d never heard of before, called Pettersson and Findus 2. It looked harmless enough so we turned it on and I went about my business, not paying too much attention to it. Until all of a sudden I realized, this movie is in German. And my kid is just sitting on the bed watching it like he has any idea what they’re saying. So I said, Wyatt, why the heck are you watching a movie in German? His response was “Because it’s funny and I like it.” I didn’t even know how to argue with that. So I didn’t. I just accepted that my child now like ridiculous German children’s movies. All my worries about stealing some of his innocence today faded away. Thanks, Germany.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We went to soccer, had dinner, and did some work out of the What Your Preschooler Needs to Know activity book. And talked about how sails on a boat work. Because, of course we did.
Has your kid ever been into something more weird than German kids movies? Let me know so we can be weird-kid moms together!
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