Too Soon

Maddox is freaking me out in a couple of ways. He just turned three, and I figured I had plenty of time until the "difficult" questions starting coming up. But nooooo, he has pushed the envelope in this department.

The first issue came up when they put up the holiday lights in Davis Square. We drive through every night after Chava and I pick up Maddox from school, and one night Maddox pointed them out to Chava, saying, "Chavie, look at the Christmas lights!" I said, "They're holiday lights, Maddox, they could be for Hanukkah, too." "No," he said, "they're Christmas lights." And, of course, all over our neighborhood, people have lights outside their houses and some of the particularly tacky displays include the blow-up Santas (with Pooh and Tigger, Maddox's particular fave) along with lights and deer on the roof, etc. etc. So, Maddox naturally asked if WE could have lights outside our house, which I suppose technically we could, but somehow doesn't really feel right. So I told him no, that we celebrate Hanukkah, so we don't decorate for Christmas, but we could drive around and look at all the Christmas lights. Which of course led to the question, "Why don't we get Christmas?" which is particularly difficult to answer given that we'll go to Grumpaw and Nonna's and have a big Christmas celebration with pretty much more presents than Maddox sees at any other time of the year.

The second issue came up while we were talking about another kid in Maddox's class, whose mom is pregnant and due to give birth any day now. Every once in a while I will ask Maddox if Duncan's sister is here yet, and usually he just says no and moves on, but one night this week he wanted to talk about it. First of all, he's consumed with the idea that when babies come out they're dirty, because he's seen pictures of himself just after he was pulled out of my belly and he's covered in shmutz. So we always have to talk about why new babies are dirty. But this time he wanted to go deeper, and he asked me HOW babies get out. Oy.