Chicken or the Egg?

As I’m driving Mouse to school this morning, a mourning dove startled from the median at a stop sign and flew over the car. Mouse yelled, “Mom! A “morning” dove. It’s out because it’s morning”. Well, I didn’t really correct her because well, I wasn’t sure how to explain the concept of “mourning” before 9 am to a 4 year old.

What followed was a discussion about birds. Mouse said, mourning doves are birds and birds lay eggs. And the proceeded to list a bunch of birds and proclaim their egg laying abilities and how little baby birdies hatch out of eggs.

Baboo suddenly started yelling “AH! EAT, EAT! EAT, EAT! Birdies! EGGS!” It took me a minute, as it usually does, to figure out that she connected that birds lay eggs and that we eat eggs. So I said “Yes, we do eat the eggs from some birds. Like chickens.”

Mouse started laughing and said “Chickens??” while, Baboo said “OH NO!”. So explained that, yes, the eggs we buy in the store and use to cook with are from chickens. (insert Baboo clucking here)

When I looked at Mouse’s face in the rear view mirror, I saw the start of a look of horror on her face, so I quickly explained that not all eggs have baby birds in them and only the ones with no babies in them are the ones that we eat.

Then Baboo says “I hungry. I want eggs”.

Hmmm… I might have the making of a vegetarian and a disturbing carnivore on my hands. Though I know I’ve mentioned it before, I didn’t have the heart to reiterate that when we EAT chicken, it’s REALLY a chicken. Oy. I’ll save that bombshell for another day.

Some days I’m surprised at the real world connections that Baboo makes that Mouse is really only just starting to get. I guess a part of me is happy that she’s still innocent, but another part of me thinks I’ve overprotected her and should have helped her to make these connections.

Another Baboo “connection”: lately we’ve been singing quite a bit. Baboo loves music and sings a lot. I always sing to the girls a song of their choice at bed time and they almost always choose Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star or ABCs. Yesterday, I was getting Baboo dressed, she was telling me that the night before we sang both songs. After a minute or two, she got a surprised look on her face and sat up on the change table. She yelled with hands out for emphasis 3 inches from my face, “Mommy! Twinkle,Twinkle and ABC same! SAME!” and sang a piece of both to get her point across. I was stunned for a minute and then confirmed to her that yes, they have the same music, just different words. With a smug little smile, she laid back down so I could finish getting her dressed saying quietly to herself, as though she’d figured out a big world mystery ;“Both same. Hahaha.”