The lils have become increasingly curious about the facts of life, and how they came to be. While they haven’t actually come out and asked the hard questions, I know that they are coming. Most of their curiosity is actually evident in their conversations with each other, as they explore where they came from. We mostly listen in amusement, occasionally correcting gross misconceptions (like the idea that Goose was in “mommy’s stomach” with Woo, she just waited an extra year and a half before deciding to be born).
I sense that we dodged a bit of a bullet this weekend. We were walking to the local mall, and Woo wanted to talk about the stray dogs. Bangalore has a lot of stray dogs. They seem to be everywhere you go, except in gated communities, where the staff does a decent job of keeping the out. They tend to ignore people, and seem to coexist peacefully with the other strays, although there are the occasional turf wars that result in much barking and the offending dog getting chased away.
Woo wanted to talk about the dogs because the females are easily identified by the fact that their teats essentially drag on the ground. We figure that they are breeding so often that their bodies never recover, and explained this to him. He was more intrigued by the notion that dogs could breastfeed than he was curious about the constant breeding (phew). We answered all of his questions, and the matter dropped when we arrived at the mall.
On our trip home, it became apparent to me that Woo got the gist of what we were explaining. We used the appropriate terms, words he’d certainly heard before, and he seemed comfortable with them. His interpretation, however, was coloured by the fact that he is five. “Mom,” he said, “that’s a female dog. She feeds her puppies with all that funny stuff she has going on under her.”
Ah, the simplicity of youth.