Improving My Prehistoric Vocabulary

Pumpkin is fascinated by dinosaurs.

She is so fascinated that when we go to the library, we now bypass the kiddie section with the Biscuit board books and make a beeline for the children’s nonfiction section where she prowls the shelves for just the right dinosaur books that she’ll start looking at once we get into the car.

These books contain sometimes graphic depictions of T. Rex’s eating their prey. She doesn’t care. She’s not scared. She knows they’re all dead.

She can identify the different types of dinos – not just T Rex and Triceratops… but Stegasaurus. Apotosaurus. Brachiosaurus. Deinochyrus. Cryolophosaurus. (I didn’t look any of those up – the stuff’s sinking in with me too).

For her birthday, my grandmother asked what Pumpkin wanted. I told her: dinosaurs. My grandmother said, “I’m not getting her dinosaurs. Something something Barbie something something blah blah blah.” And I was a bit upset. First of all – Barbie? Eh. Second of all, you asked what the child wanted, she wants dinosaurs — and really? How cool is that? She doesn’t just like playing with the figurines (though, as you can see in the picture above, she really DOES like playing with the figurines), she likes flipping through the books, checking out the illustrations. She likes to talk about dinosaurs. A few weeks ago, a little boy at daycare approached her with a dinosaur. “ROAR!” he said, “I’m going to eat you all up.” Pumpkin looked at him and the dino in his hand and scoffed, “That’s a PLANT EATER.”

Yes, indeed.

You never know what is going to catch your kiddo’s fancy. The Princess has actually loved things that are all pretty much things I love: reading, writing, music. Pumpkin’s interests are giving me a learning experience too, and that’s actually kind of cool.