Whys and Wherefores

Pleasant weekend. Took Sam to a nearby playground while Susan bought groceries. It's amazing how merely rolling around on the ground is exciting and enjoyable when you're three. The "enjoyment of life" part of the brain must take up 70% at that age.


Also shown: Sam has learned to eat a bowl of yogurt without spilling a drop. What he hasn't quite mastered is keeping it off his face. Here's his rendition of the Yogurt Monster.

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Susan and Sam were playing in the backyard Saturday, when Sam just knelt down on a stump in the back yard, and after a few moments he got up and said, “I just said a prayer.”
Susan: “What did you say?”
Sam: “It was to God.”
Susan:“What did you tell God, or is it private?”
Sam: “It’s not private. I thanked him for the grass, and stumps, and dandylions. Then I said Amen.”

Nice to see him praying on his own. :-) On the other hand, Sunday after church we drove past a Unitarian church with a particularly nice playground. Sam wanted to know if we were going there. When I said no ("Why?" "They don't worship God") Sam said he didn't want to worship God--he wanted to go to that church (with the nice playground). So we still have a little work to do!

Again on spiritual matters, we borrowed from Sam's Aunt Amy a copy of The Prince of Egypt, a Disney film about the Exodus. It's visually beautiful and well done, a tall order given how graphic the topic can be. Susan went the extra mile with Sam and sat with him during the Passover scene and the death of the first-born, explaining to him what was going on.

Which seemed like a great idea, but led to questions in subsequent days about whether "angels kill little boys." Hooboy. Just that once, I told him, though that's maybe not quite true.

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He's definitely into the Why stage. Susan narrowly avoided trouble the other day when she caught herself before mentioning the Holy Spirit. THAT would have been a long conversation!

The whys have even infected my singing to him at night to put him to sleep. I was singing "The Mermaid" and he started asking what a widow is, what it means for the land lubbers to "lie down below" (go to hell, I think, but I didn't tell him that, being a land lubber myself), and I quickly changed songs! Since most children's songs are about death or the sea or railroads (go figure), this may seriously deplete my repetoire! Yesterday he said that he didn't think Clementine really died. No, surely not.