E=mc2

During a routine diaper change G was giving a play-by-play of his thoughts. Somewhere in between "...and that guy in the blue shirt had two swords...I don't know where my apple go...and the ball went waaaay up into the sky..." he stopped short. He looked me square in the eye and asked, "Mommy, how does the sun come up? Does it pop?"

Holy crap. How does one even BEGIN?! I did not realize I was going to be faced with such questions this early on in the game. Somehow I thought I had a few more years before having to be on my toes to answer complex inquiries. So I attempted an answer:

Me: "Okay, are you ready? It's complicated but I think you can get it so I'm going to tell you."
Him: "Yes. "
Me: "So we live here. (I make a fist and point to a freckle on my knuckle). It's a planet called earth.
Him: "Ersh."
Me: "Good. Yes. Sort of. So we live on planet earth."
Him: "P-anet Ersh."
Me: "Yes. Planet Earth. Okay so now, give me your hand. Your hand is the sun. (He smiles because he knows his hand is his hand and very much NOT the sun. Mommy's silly.) I move his hand around my fist in slow motion.) When your hand, the sun, is next to the us, the freckle, it is day time. We play. We skip. We shout- Hooray! Then your hand, the sun, moves away a little bit and we can't see it anymore. You follow? Then it's dark. It is getting to be night-night time. See? Day (We move his hand close to freckle). Night. (his hand away from freckle.) Day. Night.
Him: "Mommy?"
Me: (All proud of myself for successfully embarking on physics with my son through our Hands and Freckles analogy.) Yes, honey?

Him: "I want Daddy."

And there you have it. My first real deal teachable moment and I blew it. G thought about what I was telling him and wanted to get as far away from this wakadoodle mommy who thought his hand was the sun and her freckle was the Ersh.

G's thought bubble: "Okay, so I may not have combined sounds down yet and "th" doesn't come easily for my tiny mouth and crowded teeth but this whole business about my sun going around her earth? Well, that's just plain erroneous. She obviously was not a biology major in college. The earth clearly and unmistakibly orbits around the sun and not the other way around. Poor Mom. She's choking already and I haven't even asked her the super tough questions like can I wear pink or what's really in her sippy cup. I'm going to go find my apple now. I remember where I put it. I just hope Mom didn't move it from inside the big speaker hole in the living room.