Of Our Scientist

Remember when I told you Emmett was our sponge? Our questioner, our scientist, the one voted most likely to push this homeschooling momma to learn a lot more about everything just to satisfy his insane desire for knowing exactly how the world works.

Questions that have me honestly answering, "You know, I actually don't even understand how that works - I just know it does." Questions like "How does the other phone know you're calling it?" which leads to "How do phones have their own numbers?" Follow-ups as simple as, "Why?" are not good enough for this guy. He literally thinks through my answers and comes up with legitimate inquiries based on that new knowledge.

So then we had Daylight Savings Time.

Blow this kid's mind.

The poor guy, as the days have been getting shorter through the fall, has begun having mild breakdowns when the sun begins to set. "It's already bed-time and we haven't even had dinner!" Now, on the one hand, I totally want to work this "sundown = bedtime" misconception - especially now, post Daylight Savings Time: "Oh look, Daddy just got home from work, but, bummer! It's bedtime! See you guys later!"

But I do tend to have issues with lying to my kids. Darn conscience.

Thus, I've been trying to explain that the sun just starts setting earlier during the fall. Thus, Saturday, as we were at the grocery store, pre-dinner, while the sun was setting and he was crying, again, about not having eaten (eating is REALLY important to our kids), I went so far as to explain that the next day, it would even be dark when we went to evening church/children's choir.

Lo and behold, as we're gathering children into the car to head to choir, the remainder light of the day was glimmering through the twilight. "Momma, did you tell me it would be dark before we go to church? How did you know it would be dark?"

"Well, it's something called Daylight Savings Time - we had to change the time on the clocks, so now it gets dark earlier."

"How do you change the time?! That's silly!" "Well, we just change what time the clock says." "But how do you change what the clock says?" "We just do." (aka the Lazy Mom's way of saying, I can't explain it right now - we were in the car, so it wasn't exactly an option to pull out the clock and show him how it works.)

Pause.

"Momma?" "Yes?" "How do the clocks control the world?"

Bam. Well, now that's a good solid question from a four-year-old.

So, then I have to go into dynamics about how the world itself does its thing without changing - the only thing that changes is what time the clock says, which affects when things like children's choir starts.

But really, I'm just grasping at straws, trying to describe this crazy world in a language a little boy can understand.

And somehow he's soaking it all in, despite my worst efforts.

All I know is google was invented for such a time as this.