Made in America
"Why?" is definitely the question asked most frequently. But in distant second, comes "Who made this?"
From socks and underwear, to telephones and teapots; keyboards, televisions, toilet paper, sink faucets. Shoes, paper, CDs and sun screen. Cameras, lightbulbs and kleenex. Invariably my answer is almost always the same: "that? It was made in a factory".
Bobbin understands what a factory is. She's seen episodes of "How It's Made" on tv. It's like that show was created with her in mind. She's watched how toilet paper is made on her Elmo Potty dvd. A factory is a big building with lots of machines inside that cut and stamp and hammer and screw stuff together and put them in boxes as they move down a big conveyer belt like the one you see at the cash register at the grocery store only bigger.
She also understands that a lot of factories that make stuff are in China. And she understands that China is a big country on the other side of the world and that we share the sun with them and when it's our turn to have sun, it's their turn to go to bed and vice versa. If she has any mental picture at all of China at this point, it's dark when we're awake and has a lot of really big buildings and a whole lotta airplanes flying stuff from the really big buildings to stores all over the world.
Apparently she's started to make some interesting connections in her smart little brain, because while we were on our way to school having one of our usual "how is it made" conversations - this one about our smart car - she paused and looked down at her lap for a moment and then up and me and asked "Mommy, who made my body?"
So I explained that her body, and all people's bodies, are not made in factories. Her body grew from a little tiny speck ("Like Horton's speck?" was the question that followed that) and was "made by me and Daddy. We decided we wanted to have a baby, and then you started growing in Mommy's tummy. At first you were 'this big'", and I held my index finger and thumb together to illustrate, "and then you grew bigger and bigger and bigger inside my tummy because my body was helping yours to grow. And then one day you were big enough to come out of my tummy and we went to the hospital and you were born!"
I think she was just happy to hear she wasn't assembled on a conveyer belt somewhere in China. I had clearly skipped a few details, but the answer seemed to suffice, and then we went on to talk about how Ginger's body was made, and Spicey's, and Tommy's, and Grandma's and Grandpa's and Daddy's. All remarkably similar processes.
Then it was back to stuff that required machines to build them, because that is infinitely more interesting. Thank goodness.
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