Knowing Owen, he'll start polling his classmates and compiling the data.

Which he can report to you thereby providing you with more to read and discuss. It's win/win!

Oddly, I read the meat discussion while I am full of vegan food. It was my vegan friend's birthday, so we had vegan Thai food, and then the vegan key lime pie (the raw avocado one, Hil!) and a vegan pumpkin cheesecake. Both were delicious. But normally I eat meat.

Go here [link] Click on the logo. Click it again. And again, and again...

Dude. 9-year-old Teppy just squeed with utter joy. 38-year-old Teppy is afraid she'll have sparkly rainbow nightmares.

I remember my friend Alison telling me about asking her dad "what happens after you die" when she was five years old. And he said, "It's like you go to sleep but you don't wake up."

And she was fine with that.

On the other hand, I've heard a few stories about kids who were told this and then totally freaked out about going to sleep for weeks afterwards because they were afraid they wouldn't wake up. So I guess it depends on where your kid's mind tends to go with things like that.

the vegan key lime pie (the raw avocado one, Hil!)

Ooh, that sounds good.

Go here [link] Click on the logo. Click it again. And again, and again...

I love how the code for what happens when you click on the logo is called "cornify". 'Cause, yeah.

Knowing Owen, he'll start polling his classmates and compiling the data.

I love this.

I definitely remember figuring out that everyone and everything dies at about that age; it was a sudden awful revelation that hit me like a freight train one night when I was five, getting ready for bed, and it terrified me so badly I went tearing into my brothers' room, where my mom was diapering and PJ'ing them, and wailed, "Mommy, I'm going to die!" like she could fix it somehow. She said that yes, I would someday, but not for a very long time and I didn't need to worry about it for a while yet.

It completely threw me for a loop to find out that some people didn't believe in God at all, but I was only seven or eight, so I guess I'm still marginally ahead of some of the people Trudy went to college with.

And I worry that I'm not teaching Matilda enough about God, that for her S/He's categorized with fairies and superheroes and Santa Claus: all benevolent magic (er, no, I'm not yet reading her any old Celtic tales about the Fair Folk, so she also has no idea yet how deeply weird fairies are), and all equally real even though she hasn't yet personally encountered any of them.

And, of course, I've got my own issues with my church and I don't know myself where I'll be a year or so from now, so it's hard to invest myself in investing her in all the rituals, I'm so constantly in a rage at the people currently running the show.

And I worry that I'm not teaching Matilda enough about God, that for her S/He's categorized with fairies and superheroes and Santa Claus:

On a lighter note, my neighbor growing up was trying to get his son to believe in Santa, but he refused after hearing "a right jolly old elf," because elves aren't real!

Elves, fairies, unicorns: all real. And yesterday when we were out walking through the neighborhood I pointed out an especially gussied-up multi-pastel Victorian as "colored like an Easter egg," and Matilda said, "It's the Easter Bunny's house. Yeah. He lives there."

I myself personally believe in the Boneless Chicken Ranch, where ripe chickens drop naturally from the trees when they're ready to be eaten.