Dude, this reminds me of a full moon night that completely left my DD(3 at that time) awestruck! There was white snow on the ground and the moonlight bounced off it, creating an ethereal scene. It was so bright you could read a newspaper! DD exclaimed a lot of wows but I didnt realize what impact that night had on her until many months later, she said to me right before bedtime," mom, do you remember the night there was snow on the ground and the full moon's light bounced off it? Wasn't that beautiful? I cannot forget it!"

I had a similar life-changing experience one night, somewhere in the South Pacific, aboard a darkened ship. We weren't supposed to go outside, but following orders is not among my strongest talents. It turns out that moonlight glistens off the ocean as well as it does off of snow, with a dynamic motion element that snow can't match. Also, the name "Milky Way" actually makes sense under the right local conditions.

My son just described the emotions of a character in a story who bests a rabbit who eats his vegetable garden as schadenfreude. Yup, he uses "schadenfreude" but still doesn't use "the".

A very useful term, to be sure. I've always been moderately annoyed that there isn't a completely equivalent term in English. What? Are we not capable of this emotion? HA.

Lovemydd - my 2nd and 3rd children were born at home, so we often get very confused questions about what hospitals have got to do with having babies.

Dude - My eldest was moon obsessed, when she was very little (12-18 months?) the only purpose she found in most books was to find the pages with moons and point them out. And we had to take her up to the roof of the building to say goodnight to the moon every night. Which was tricky when there was no moon... My youngest it was stars... only books about stars, or with lots of stars on the pages.

Aquinas - "the" was the hardest word for both of my older children to learn to read, even my HG+ girl who learned to read with such ease struggle with "the". It's funny that your little guy won't use it.

MumofThree, the only 2 babies my child knows were born in hospitals via c-section. She herself is a preemie, emergency c-section. So that is my dd's world view. When her nanny was pregnant, dd horrified her by telling her that the doctors are going to cut her tummy open to take the baby out and she is going to be in terrible pain. Nanny had to explain that she was expecting a natural birth. When I came home, dd excitedly told me," mom, guess what? Not all babies have to be taken out of their mom's tummy. Some come out naturally."

Two quirky DS21mo anecdotes from today.

Anecdote 1:
The pilot on our flight broadcasts an apology for a delay to the cabin, to which DS chirps, "No worries!"

Anecdote 2:
Grandpa-- Look at the teeth on that whale!
DS-- Whales actually have baleen, Grandpa.*

*Technically, there are some whales with teeth, but I don't think DS has been exposed to one yet, and the particular whale being referenced did have baleen.

DD8 quite unselfconsciously performed her interpretation of my walk this weekend, in the middle of the mall. I heard about it later in the car, with no opportunity to demonstrate, so DD gave the following description: "Feet turned out, butt sucked in." Later at home, she gave a repeat performance, which was about as exaggerated a duck walk as you're likely to see, and would have done Monty Python proud.

FTR, I do not walk like a duck.

DD3.9 was not potty trained for #2 up until 2 weeks ago. Naturally, I was panicking and tried every trick in the book to no avail. Then 2 weeks ago I just said to her," do you know that you are hurting the earth when you poop in the diaper because it ends up in the landfill. But when you poop in the potty, it goes to a wwtp ( her favorite place, btw) where it turns into fertilizer." That's all it took! Today, while doing her business on the potty, she said," mom, I love helping planet earth and keeping it blue and green. Remember how I used to talk about moving to moon or Neptune? I don't have those feelings anymore."
Lol!

Awesome! Whatever works, I say!