This morning I took down the globe that my parents bought me when I was 8 years-old to show Amelia some geography things. She has a map puzzle and we've looked at other maps, like in rental car places and she always recognizes Florida first and says excitedly, "That's where Grandma lives!" I showed her America and she corrected me and said, "You mean the United States." Sure honey. She was curious about Canada and Mexico. Then we tilted it down and I showed her where Tia Polly and Cristian are from (Chile). Then I pointed out the Atlantic Ocean and reminded her of how we saw the airplanes when we were at the beach in SC at Easter. I had told Amelia how her friend Livia was going to ride one right over the same ocean to see her grandparents this summer. So while we were looking at the globe I traced my finger from the coast of SC all the way to Rumania (as it's spelled on my globe). Amelia was pretty fascinated so I went ahead and showed her all the oceans - how besides the Atlantic there is the Pacific that goes to Japan and China (in case she's heard of those countries ... I should have reminded her about Kai-Lan, oops). Then the Indian Ocean and the Antartic where I showed her the space between Antartica and Argentina and told her penguins lived there. I expected her to say something about Madagascar, but she didn't. Then on up to the Artic Ocean where I also pointed out the North Pole. I'm thinking academically about North Pole and South Pole when I notice how her entire face has lit up. I know what she is thinking, but I wait. And then I ask her if she likes the North Pole and she says, with a huge smile, "Yes! The man who knows I love cats lives there!" I said, "Who's that?" and she yells, "Santa!!" So, despite my misgivings about playing up the myth of Santa, I went along with it and as I got up from the floor to make her oatmeal I said, "Yep, and his reindeer, too!"
The reason we wound up looking at the globe was we had been reading her baggie book (the book that her teacher sends home each week in a large ziploc bag). This week's book was called
Gravity, which was great because it's a concept I've been trying to get across to her as she accidentally drops her toys on the floor of the backseat or tries to put her toothpaste on with the brush straight up in the air. The book included the lava that comes down from a volcano. I asked her if she knew what a volcano was and she announced, "A mountain that explodes!" So I took down the globe to show her Iceland and told her how a volcano erupted there last week.
On the way to school we talked more about her bad dream from last night. She said that we took her to a park near where a girl she goes to school with lives. She said it wasn't too far away from here. She said at the park there was a scary room because it had strange lights and a strange ceiling and too many toys on the floor! And then she clarified and said it was too many toy trucks on the floor, that they were dump trucks. She then described the colors of the one she played with and the one I played with, describing how the front was one color and the 'box on the back' was another color. When I repeated it to her she said, "And Daddy was there, too!" I tried to assure her that if we were both there, that she shouldn't have been scared, that we wouldn't take her to a scary place on purpose. She responded with, "What?" which is her standard response when she is processing new information.
I know all children have bad dreams and I'd like to think she wasn't too scared if she had stayed in the room and played with the toy trucks. She was still talking about it when I picked her up from preschool and took her to MeMe's. It has really lodged in her brain today!
I work late on Wednesdays and a lot of times Daddy will do a 'drive-by' after he picks up Amelia. It's always fun to see her. Tonight she needed to use the potty and so I had a little extra time with her 
