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Jack has taken a real interest lately in the Discovery Channel and science shows.  Last night we watched an episode of Planet Earth on mountains.

It's really sweet how fascinated he is with learning about nature, and really annoying how he doesn't get that if it's not on Tivo I CANNOT "fast forward it" when a commercial comes on.  He will tell me 50 times to fast forward like I'm a old lady with dementia who can't process what I'm being told; he simply refuses to accept that in real-time TV, commercials are a fact of life.

Anyway, last night's show on mountains featured a lot of animals.  They would say often "the panda and her cub..." or "the baboon and her babies" etc. and finally Jack picked up that there were no fathers being mentioned.  "Where are the Daddies?" he asked.

"At work" I responded. 

He wasn't convinced by my answer so I followed up with "...getting bacon", which is something my husband told him he was doing to explain his absence during the day and which Jack seems to accept more readily than us being "off to work".  He's inherited a love of bacon from us and figures anything that involves bringing it home is probably worth the suffering of being left behind.

Things got extra tricky when "the first ever filmed snow leopard hunt" was shown where the leopard was chasing a mountain goat.  Oh man, I thought, how am I going to get by this?  I'm still freaked out by the brutality of nature, how can I explain this to an innocent child?  Darn this no-Tivo, I  can't even pretend to accidentally roll over on the the fast forward button.

While I was debating how to handle this "teaching moment", Jack said "Look Mommy, the snow leopard wants to hug the goat! And the goat does not want to be hugged!".  And then, as the snow leopard was straddling and dragging it's doomed prey, Jack said with warmth and satisfaction, "Ahhh, he's hugging the goat!".

Um, ok...when you're lobbed a softball you take it. 

"He's a good hugger", I agreed.