More about Ryan, because I have much love for the little boy today. He's been learning the names of many dinosaurs (his favourite is the Triceratops), but last night we got into it. I told him that there aren't any dinosaurs anymore, and how did we know they used to be on the Earth? And he didn't know, so I told him it's because we found their bones. He got very excited, because he remembered that in my dinosaur book, they have lots of dinosaur bones.

This is Ryan's dinosaur book: [link] It's quite excellent.
My dinosaur book: [link] Also excellent. A couple of weeks ago, we sat down together and looked up dinosaurs in both books, and Ryan remembered that there were lots of bones in my book.

So then I started explaining to him that there aren't any dinosaurs anymore, but birds came from dinosaurs. I told him that a mummy and daddy dinosaur could have a baby dinosaur that's just a little bit different from them, and then it has a baby that's a bit different, and so on; and after a long, long time, they become birds. Not that he really grasps that yet, but he gets that there's a connection between dinosaurs and birds. I pointed out that some dinosaurs in his book has feathers, and he understood that; then I explained that the dinosaurs had teeth, but that changed with the birds, and now they have beaks. And he commented, "And some dinosaurs have beaks!" He was absolutely right, there was one I'd pointed out called Psittacosaurus ("parrot-lizard") with a parrot-like beak, and of course his favourite dinosaur, Triceratops, likewise has a beak. (And eighty teeth as well, I think it has the most teeth of any dinosaur.) And he made the connection, that birds and some dinosaurs had beaks, and birds and dinosaurs are related. (Erroneously; the beaked dinosaurs were ornithischian - bird-hipped - and the birds' ancestors were the carnivorous, saurischian theropods, i.e. lizard-hipped - just for a spot of irony. But he grasped the connection, and started looking for similarities.)

Mere words cannot express how I've looked forward to the day when I could talk to Ryan about such matters. And here it is. (He's feeling his way towards the discovery that some dinosaurs were carnivorous, and I'm not rushing him; he has ten dinosaur stickers on his wall, and he still believes they are all good friends. He really is a thoughtful little man, in every sense.)

Triceratops was my favorite dinosaur too.

In fact, I learned how to read with dinosaur books and Dr. Seuss.

I am also good at krotching and cross stitch

Krotching?!? I'm thinking perhaps she means crochet??

I have a friend who crochets and knits and does other crafty stuff. She registered on some message board somewhere as "Crocheter," and got a lot of grief from people who told her she needed to change her name to something that wasn't vulgar.

They thought it was "Crotch eater." Hand to god, this is true.

Triceratops was my favorite dinosaur too.

It is a fine choice. My favourite was, I think, Deinonychus; Ankylosaurus and Stegosaurus were also right up there with Triceratops. Generally speaking, I was pretty keen on well-defended ornithischians.

Triceratops and Plesiosaur were my favorites. I had a toys of them that I took everywhere for a while. Ryan is a very smart little boy!

The crocheting mishaps are making me sad.

the beaked dinosaurs were ornithischian - bird-hipped - and the birds' ancestors were the carnivorous, saurischian theropods, i.e. lizard-hipped - just for a spot of irony.

Dammit, evolution.

Ryan is wonderful. I can't remember what my favorite dinosaur was.

Ankylosaurus and Stegosaurus were also right up there with Triceratops.

Pretty sure I dug those guys, though. May I also put in a plug for the generally forgotten Allosaurus? I am just trying to remember all the dinosaurs I put in my first book, The Disastrous Dino War.

oh lucky you billytea, I love talking dinosaurs with toddlers! They know all sorts of facts that adults have forgotten. Oh! You can watch the Walking With The Dinosaurs series with him! So much fun, although the dinosaurs can be rough on the wee world view what with all eating the young and such. I think the first we watched was actually Before The Dinosaurs and in some ways it was the one the kids liked the best because really its focus was on evolutionary adaptation.

Triceratops and Plesiosaur were my favorites. I had a toys of them that I took everywhere for a while.

Oh yes. Dinosaur toys are such fun at that age, aren't they? We were able to pick up a jar of multiple decent-sized plastic dinosaurs - one Stegosaurus is about a foot long - for only $15 or so. Good variety, it even has a Pachycephalosaurus and I think a Dilophosaurus (a proper one, not the fanciful Jurassic Park version). It included two Triceratops, which Ryan is very taken with. (He and his best friend like to play dinosaurs. Said friend goes for T. rex, so there are no disputes.)

The local Australian Geographic store has a plush Triceratops at a fairly reasonable price. It could be a go for Christmas, we'll see.

Ryan is a very smart little boy!

He's doing well. He's quite bright I think - certainly bright enough that it's not going to hold him back - but more than that, he has the temperament. He loves learning, he loves puzzling things out and getting absorbed in them, he loves testing his understanding with us. (And his Daddy loves Presenting him with learning experiences, so that works pretty well.)

May I also put in a plug for the generally forgotten Allosaurus?

I'm old enough to remember it being called Antrodemus (which I preferred).  I was always horribly unfair to Allosaurus. It's possibly my least favourite theropod, for no particularly good reason. "I don't like them! ...They wet their nests!"

oh lucky you billytea, I love talking dinosaurs with toddlers! They know all sorts of facts that adults have forgotten. Oh! You can watch the Walking With The Dinosaurs series with him! So much fun, although the dinosaurs can be rough on the wee world view what with all eating the young and such. I think the first we watched was actually Before The Dinosaurs and in some ways it was the one the kids liked the best because really its focus was on evolutionary adaptation.

Is that the Walking with Monsters series, with things like the Burgess Shale fauna and the gigantic millipede? I love that series, though there are apparently a number of inaccuracies. Nonetheless, it's great stuff. (David Attenborough's First Life is somewhat more rigorous, of course.) I will certainly be watching that with Ryan, though maybe not until he's come to terms with animal predation. I'm still haunted by the time we let him see too much of Frozen Planet, namely a brutal and bloody fight between a timber wolf and a young bison. And my little boy pointing and saying plaintively, "Fall down!" He needed reassurance that there would be "No fall down" in his viewing material for a few weeks thereafter. 

But we will have the Walking series, and I've already started him on some carefully targeted Attenborough. (Whenever he sees Sir David, he asks, "You saw him?" Why, yes I did.) Give him another year or two, and we can possibly do the marathon viewing. By my calculations, watching one episode a night, I have enough nature programming to keep us going for about five months solid. 

bt, when he's old enough to handle the idea of predation, if you get a chance to take him to a live showing of Walking With Dinosaurs, do. I loved it; I felt like a kid, staring up at these life-size dinosaurs walking around and roaring at the audience. They don't really emphasize predation, but they don't pretend it didn't happen. It's a wonderful show.