The Philosopher

P tends to hang out with me when I cook or do dishes (which seems to fill about a third of the day). About once a day he'll wander the playroom instead, entranced in his imaginary world, but usually he prefers to interact. If we are baking, his interactions are baking based. He Loves to pour ingredients, use the mixer, the whisk, the spatula, stir, measure, check muffins with a toothpick. (This week alone he has made home made caramels, orange bran muffins, beer pizza dough and multi-grain pancakes.) Of late, knives hold a particular place in his heart so he happily helps chop now too. He slices, fries and seasons his own mushrooms (a favorite of his) and assists with the veggies on most every meal. The floor space under his ladder holds the daily proof of his help, hopefully his fingertips won't :)

But washing dishes isn't his thing. So he chats. It seems to be his time to bring up issues he's been chewing on for a while. Like yesterday:

P: What happens when you get off of the earth, mama?
Me: You mean outer space?
P: Um, no? When you get off the earth?
Me: You mean, like climb a tree, your feet are off of the earth? Or do you mean, fly in a plane, so you are off of the ground or earth?
P: No, mama. (he smiled at me like I was a moron) That still the earth. When you go up, and then you off the earth.
Me: Ok. Well, you go up off the earth and reach the clouds, and then you go farther and you are still in the earth's atmosphere, but then you go farther and you're in outer space, or the milky way, or the universe, or whatever you want to call it.
P: Oh, Ok.

Then, about 30 minutes later:
P: When you go up, up, up and off of the earth, its dark. Why mama?
Me: When you are in outer space?
P: Yes. Why it dark in outer space? The suns up there.

I have no idea how he knows its dark in outer space (the night sky?). Or how he reasoned that it shouldn't be, due to the sun. Last week his breakfast questions brought on a discussion of the planets, the sun, orbit, night/day, and the seasons (aided by an orange, a tomato, a grape tomato and soapy dish hands), but this still seemed like quite a leap. At any rate, this week's question introduced cloud cover and reflection...

Then today P was trying to get his lineage down, again. He was listing how he came from my belly and I came from Grams' belly and Grams came from Great Grams' belly. I was nodding along when he suddenly stopped and asked
P: Mama! How we all get here when there was no mama?

P was pretty blown away by his thought. He was having trouble wrapping his mind around a baby, without a mama. But you have to have a baby to grow into a mama to have a mama to have a baby! I was pretty blown away that he had discovered a chicken/egg scenario that I didn't question until, oh, never. So another evolution discussion ensued. When we got down to the nitty gritty of evolving from germs he was thrilled. But, he wanted to know, where did the germ come from? And he had us there. Pleased nonetheless, he summed up his history of the world as gleamed from the AMNH, mixed with his new knowledge...
P: A long time ago, there were mammoths and sloths and tigers. And a long, long, loooong time ago, there no people, but dinosaurs! And the T-rex... hehe! The T-rex could catch some germs!

Alright, so not quite Kant....