Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The parenting book of superlatives

Forget an instruction manual, new parents should be given a book of superlatives to study up for when they have preschoolers!

Here's how my day goes:
Kiddo 1 or 2: "Mommy, what is the biggest animal?"
Me: "The Blue Whale".
Kiddo 1 or 2: "Mommy, what's the biggest animal that isn't in the ocean?"
Me: "An elephant"
Kiddo 1 or 2: "What about dinosaurs?"
Me: "Well, dinosaurs are extinct. There are none that live on Earth anymore. But the biggest dinosaur was the Argentinosaurus."
Kiddo 1 or 2: "Was it bigger than a blue whale?"
Me: "Nope! The blue whale is the biggest ever!"
Kiddo 1 or 2: "What's the biggest fish in the ocean?"
Me: "The Whale Shark"
Kiddo 1 or 2: "It eats tiny food!"
Me: "Yep!" [Don't think we haven't read a number of books about whale sharks!]
Kiddo 1 or 2: "What's the biggest bird?"
Me: "An Ostrich"
Kiddo 1 or 2: "No, no, I mean a bird that can *fly*!"
Me: "Google to the rescue!" [Appears to be some type of albatross, if we're not including extinct birds]

Seriously, I'm going to know the "biggest" of everything! And I'm sure soon they'll be asking "smallest", too. I think I need to bust out a nature section of a Guinness Book of World Records...

2 comments:

Liz Jimenez said...

I'm impressed you made it as far as you did without going to Google! :-)

My friend told me that she spent an awful lot of time on Wikipedia when her son was around the ages of 3 and 4. I can see why!

Nicole S. said...

When I worked at an elementary school, the kids were always obsessed with looking things up in Guiness during the library block. Definitely a good investment.

I'll have to bookmark this post of yours for future reference - you know your large animals!!