[BlogEntry] My daughter is now as smart as Copernicus

Or was it Ptolemy? Anyway. Yesterday we're in the car and she asks me whether the sun moves. I explain to her that this is a very smart question that confused many people for a long long time, but actually the sun stays right where it is and we move. She says she doesn't get it, so I promise to show her at home.

This morning (since we were very busy last night) she reminds me that I haven't shown her yet. So I borrow E, who is watching Dora, and say "Stand right here." Next I pick up K and stand her so that E is right in front of her. "See? She's right in front of you, that's daytime." I then picked K up and began walking her around E, clockwise. "Now she's over there, and it's getting to be night time. Woops, now she's behind you, that means it's night time and the other side of the world is having daytime. Oh, wait, here she comes up on the other side, morning again. Get it now?"

Of course it would have been funny at this point to report that my sun walked away, thus disproving Galilean astronomy, but she stayed put.

Later on that day (yes I realize I'm jumping backwards in the story) we were discussing "night time on the other side of the world." "Like where Uncle Derek lives?" she asks.

"Oh, no, farther away than that," I say. "Let me see if I can think of somewhere it's night time…" trying to figure out some foreign country that she would know.

"How about Egypt?"

"…Well, yes. Daddy didn't know you knew what Egypt was."

"Or China?"

"Right again, it's night time in China too."

"And Disney World!"

"Well, no, Disney World is over in the daytime section with us."

"But Daddy, you have to take a plane to China, and we took a plane to Florida. I don't understand."

I love explaining this stuff.