When Dominic was in preschool, I went to pick him up one day and a little girl and a few of her friends came over and she said, matter-of-factly “there’s a baby in there!” and pointed to my stomach.
I about died.
“No, I’m not pregnant”
“Oh. Well how come you are so fat then?”
My 7 year old daughter: “Daddy, how do cats get married?”
Me: “Cats don’t get married like people do, sweetheart.”
Daughter: “Of course they do, how else would we get kittens?”
I hope she keeps that logical progression in mind post-puberty.
Lady across the street is pregnant. Dad drives her away. Adopted Korean kid, who has been told the story of being brought from Korea by a nanny a zillion times, asks what’s going on. Mom says that they’re going to have a baby. Kid says: “Oooh! Can we go to the airport with them?”
Heh. We’re reading “The 101 Dalmatians” with my 6 year old. At one point in the story, a female dog meets up with a male dog at a picnic and they run off into the bushes together where…(uh oh, I think to myself)…“they made hasty preparations for their marriage.”
My 5 year old and 3 year old ( (I think) grasp the concept of where babies come from: baby grows inside of tummy and then you go to the hospital to have baby taken out.
But what I love to do is mystify my son who always asks:
“But mama, how does the baby get out of your belly?”
“Same way he got in.”
[Peter O’Toole in Lion in Winter]
When I was pregant, My neighbor thought she’d use me for “show & tell” for her 3 year old. I was outside beaching myself (get it beach… whale…ok) I heard momma saying yes, she does, she has a baby inside her tummy!" Then I heard the pounding a little feet charging me. I sat up just in time to avoid a head on collision. The little girl was red faced and mad as hell. Momma caught her before she could kick me. I sat dumbfounded! Momma asked what was wrong. we heard through hickoughing sobs, “Only BAD people eat babies!”
I guess momma left something out…
My younger brother once decided to inform my ex-boyfriend and I how reproduction worked after he saw him kiss me…
According to him, at the ripe old age of nine and a half, the penis sprouted magical impregnating wires, as did a similar patch of wires that issued from the female’s navel. The wires would interlock, writhe around for a bit, and…that was sex.
Of course, he’s a Play Station, Nintendo and computer junkie, so everything has to be related to something electrical.
You don’t believe it? Parents would note that the fridge came from Sears, the washing machine from Sears, the vacuum cleaner from Sears – why not babies too?
when my niece was about 2, my sister had another baby, a boy. one day, when my sister was changing his daiper, my niece looked down at him, pointed at his penis and asked, “when’s that going to fall off and he’ll become a girl?”
she had decided that since the umbilical cord had fallen off, other parts should too.
My brother insisted that babies came falling down from the sky and crashed though the ceiling. He liked crashes.
My daughter is 3, and is very into babies, since she has a 5-month-old sister. I think most little girls will do this–she claims to have a baby growing in her tummy (“woom”). This baby is a girl, 3 months old, and named Kallik. Geniegirl also nurses and burps her animals, and the other day she was using the hourglass from a game to pretend to pump milk. It’s all pretty amusing. She has yet to ask how the baby gets in or out, though.
Hahah! A story my parents liked to tell was how when I was 2 or 3 I had a friend named Paul. One day, Paul was getting his diaper changed and I watched, then ran over to my mother and yelled, “Look, Mommy! Paul has a tail…and it’s in front…and it’s WIGGLING!!!”
(still not sure why it was wiggling…perhaps the motion of changing him? My son’s “tail” doesn’t “wiggle” when he’s gotten changed.)
