Why the why phase?

So, it's happened. It's really happened. Our boy is now 2 years and 8 months old and he has entered The Why Phase, for real. Everything he sees, everything he does....

Okay, I have to interrupt myself to supply you with a live quote. He just walked in (I had thought I had a few minutes peace, but perhaps not): What you doing up here mum? doing some work. Why? Why you doing that mum? Why you up here? I'm just trying to do some writing. But, why?

Why, indeed. Trying, being the operative word.

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Okay, I'm back. The inquisitive one is sleeping, as is his grabby hands brother. Having Zephyr enter the Why Phase has at least provided me with endless questions for this blog, although many of them are not particularly interesting for the adult reader. (Eg: "Why is that dog there?" Urr....)

The Why I am interested in at the moment is this: Why do kids go through the Why Phase? I mean, obviously there is a lot they don't know, and asking questions is the best way to gain knowledge, but is there more to it?

By around two and a half, most kids have a pretty good grasp on language, (even if only their mothers can understand what they're saying), so perhaps they have simply found the word they were looking for all this time - something that helps them glean the information they need to figure this world out. Whhhhyyyy?

But it often seems to me Zephyr is also trying to communicate with me on a new level, and this is something a lot of mothers in online forums on the subject seem to agree with.

At around three years, the child wants to talk, constantly, and sometimes they can't find a subject to talk about, so they pick something at random and ask you a question about it. If you listen to yourself as a parent, you will notice you are almost constantly asking your child questions, even ones you don't particularly want their opinions on, like 'shall we go now?' (read: it's time to go.)

So, the child is imitating you, in a way, by using questions to get a conversation going. Perhaps children are particularly sensitive to awkward silences. Oh, silences, I remember you.

It could also be to do with imagination. Zephyr's imagination is amazing, if I do say so as his unbiased mother, and seemingly limitless. When in role play mode (which is often), he can morph from a train to a lion to a holepunch in moments, absolutely becoming these things. His surroundings become a train station, a chair a tunnel, his brother a mountain to steam over.

With an imagination like that, the possibilities are endless and it's probably hard for him to see the difference between what's real and what isn't. Thus, all the questions. He needs to know the facts to help him figure out the truth. And why wouldn't there be a logical reason for that dog being there? There seems to be a logical reason for all sorts of things.

I guess the moral of the post is never to dismiss a Why, even if it seems silly to us adults. And try to suppress your giggle when the question verges on the ridiculous.

But who am I to preach? We do our best, and personally I believe that by the end of the day I deserve some kind of golden statue with my name printed on it if I haven't at least once said 'I don't know, Zephyr, I just don't know."

Why do cats purr?

Last week our 9-month-old discovered Mitzi, his Nana and Grandpa's cat. Poor Mitzi. 

When we lived at their house, our big boy was 18 months old and spent a good part of each day holding onto the cat's tail and getting pulled around the kitchen floor, and another good part of the day crying over his scratches. I never understood why the cat didn't scarper when he saw those little hands reaching for his fluff. I guess curiosity got the better of both of them.

Consoling the cat after his baby encounter, I got thinking about purring. I had heard one of the reasons cats purr is to heal themselves, but like a lot of the Whys on this blog, I couldn't be sure.

Purr to cure

It turns out there are a few reasons why cats purr, and yes, healing does appear to be one of them. Research has shown that certain frequencies of sound can improve bone density and muscle strength - and a cat's purr falls within these frequencies. Since cats spend so much of their time sleeping and resting, it's possible that purring helps to prevent the kinds of osteopathic problems experienced by humans who are unable to move around freely. It could also be the reason why cats are so hardy - the fact behind the myth that cats have nine lives.

As well as using purring to express their contentment, cats also purr when they are under stress, like at the vets or when in labour. This might be a coping mechanism as well as a way to help with healing.

Ommmm

If you have ever practiced Yoga, you will have heard or even performed a few oms. Ommmmmm... There is something quite soothing about omming, no matter how silly you might feel when you're doing it. I have been known to use oms to soothe my babies to sleep. It works, especially when you've dealing with one of those over-tired screechy cries.

Perhaps purring works in a similar way. It turns out that the purr of a cat can also soothe and heal their human slaves - I mean masters. And cat owners are 40% less likely to have a heart attack than those without feline friends.

Seems like good enough reasons to own a cat. But is it cruel to bring a cat into a house with two small boys?

I'm thinking we'll wait until the little one is old enough to listen to reason. That will happen, right?

Here's a link to a video about Smokey, the cat with the loudest known purr in the world: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akcALE_R7-o

Why does snow fall in such cool shapes?

We went to the snow last week! It took some effort and planning, taking two little dudes on a plane to the other end of the country (for those of you reading this from overseas, this flight only took an hour and a half, so don't be too impressed) and then getting them up and down mountains each day, but it was worth it. 

The two-year-old is now obsessed with mountains and snowboarding and keeps saying he wants to go back to "Keenstown". The 8-month-old was impressed for the first half hour of each trip up the mountain, then his mood generally deteriorated. Fair enough when nobody will put you down to crawl on that slippery white stuff and you're wearing a stuffy ski suit that makes you look like Maggie Simpson. How degrading!

In the flurry of planning and packing and traveling and recovering, this blog has been neglected. But here I am again, in sunnyrainy Auckland, where the winter never really happens, but where our lives do.

I can't say I saw it snow while we were in Queenstown. In fact, the weather was pretty warm the whole time we were there and the snow conditions were definitely Spring-like, with a good deal of slush at the end of each day. Despite not seeing a single snowflake land, I did get thinking about snowflake related questions, like today's Why.

Why do snowflakes make such awesome shapes?

Obviously, like other forms of precipitation, snow comes from the clouds. There is a whole lot of vapour up there milling around and eventually it needs to come down. The temperature needs to be below freezing for the vapour to form ice crystals, which will make up our beloved snowflakes.

Crystallization is one of those amazing things that happen on Earth, which remain amazing despite being explained by science. Like other crystals, ice crystals need a starting point to grow from. Often, this happens when cold water vapour hits and clings onto a dust particle, which can even be a bit of space dust. I always knew there was something mystical about snow.

Once the nucleus of the crystal has formed, the water molecules arrange themselves into an hexagonal shape, as this is the natural pattern created when you bond hydrogen and oxygen to make water.

As it falls towards the Earth, the ice crystal meets up with more cold water vapour, which attaches itself to the six sides, making the six crystalline arms you usually associate with snowflakes. Sometimes, these crystals attach themselves to other ones that are falling through the air at the same time, making the big, fat fluffy flakes I so miss from North America.

It needs to be below zero all the way down to the ground for the crystals to fall as snow, otherwise they may turn into hail or even rain.

Why is each snowflake unique?

The ice crystals grow and change as they fall through the atmosphere depending on the temperature and levels of humidity they encounter. Slight changes in temperature and humidity will distinctively change the shape of the crystal, so for this reason, with all the shifting air in the wintery sky, each snowflake is likely to form slightly differently.

Fun fact: the largest recorded snowflake was 38cm and fell in Fort Keough, Montana, USA in 1887. However, this was apparently observed by a farmer who described the flakes as 'larger than milk pans'. Sounds a bit dubious to me.

Why do we use the terms West and East to describe parts of the world?

A simple answer to this question is to point to a map. There you have it: West is on the left, East is on the right. But this leads to another question: Why are most maps set out that way?

We humans a bit obsessed with trying to order the world. We give labels to everything in it, including the tiniest molecules, so of course it follows that we have divided the actual globe into segments. These can be called the Northern, Southern, Western and Eastern hemispheres. 

Most people are aware of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and since the Earth spins on its North-South axis, these don't change, so they are an easy concept to understand. 

A Pacific-centred map

However, what makes the Eastern and Western hemispheres more difficult is perspective. From New Zealand, Africa, Asia and Europe would be West, the Americas, East. 

To make things clear, people got together back in 1884 in the USA and had a conference. At this International Meridian Conference, they decided to agree that one spot on the globe would be referred to as the international zero longitude reference line, or the Prime Meridian. 

Probably because of where a lot of these people originated from, they decided on a place in the United Kingdom, called Greenwich.

A line running North-South through Greenwich thus divides the Earth into Eastern and Western hemispheres. Using this point as zero longitude and the Equator as the North-South divide, we can reference any point on the globe using numbers. Clever old humans. 

What about the Western/Eastern world in terms of politics?

Err, yeah. I'm not getting into that. But, in short, these terms are often used without reference to the lines on the map. When people talk about the Western world in terms of politics or wealth, they often mean the First World. So Australia and New Zealand are the 'West' in terms of way of life, despite being in the Eastern hemisphere.

My kid is lost

I don't blame it. You will need to explain latitude and longitude. An easy way to do this is to look at a map, or even better, a globe, and point out the lines that run through it. Everything is new to kids, so to tell them that people all agree that this one line is where we divide the world into West and East should be pretty simple. 

You could get out the compass and have a bit of an orienteering session on the lawn to get directions sorted. This concept is probably a 4 years+ Why, or maybe older? Those of you with 4-year-olds will be able to tell me this...I'm still dealing with the terrific twos. Good luck!

Next time

I don't have another Why just yet, so I'm going to call for questions again. Comment below if you have one. You have two weeks to think about it. Get whying.

Why do my fingers turn into prunes in the bath?

Who knew this would be such an interesting question? I was expecting a pretty simple answer, but it seems there is a lot to wrinkly finger syndrome, and some scientists even call it a mystery.

Here goes, as I understand it.

Our skin is covered in an oil called sebum (love telling that one to kids...hehehe, sebum!) which gets washed away when we soak too long.

Hands and feet get a lot of use so contain a lot of dead keratin cells, which is the matter found in hair and nails. Without the sebum, the dead keratin cells absorb water and the outer layer of skin swells. Because this skin is attached to the tissue beneath it, the extra surface area causes it to wrinkle.

Simple enough, but this is just a theory.

Another theory hypothesized by scientists at Newcastle University says the wrinkling is caused by the constriction of blood vessels beneath the skin. This seems to be an automatic function of the nerve fibres beneath the skin, which are triggered to shrink when hands are immersed. This constriction causes the skin to be pulled inwards, thus wrinkling it. This theory is backed up by the fact that people with nerve damage to their hands will not display wrinkly finger syndrome, even after a long relaxing bath.

So why would our bodies require such a function? Well, this is where it gets interesting. Newcastle University puts it down to a survival mechanism that allowed our ancestors to gather food in the wet. The wrinkles act like the tread on car tyres, providing some traction. They also create channels, allowing water to drain off the fingers, again improving grip.

This was tested using marbles. People with wrinkly fingers can grasp a wet marble better than those who haven't been soaking. The grasping of dry marbles was not improved.

How do I explain this to my kid?

Yes, perhaps a bit too much science? I would start with the sebum. The nerves would need to be explained before you continued on. Talk about how you can feel something is hot or cold, rough or smooth, etc. Then move on to the car tread and the channels and the gripping of wet vegetables in the rain. That should keep em quiet for a while.

I have news

Today my two-year-old asked if the neighbour's cat could come in the car with us to the playground. I said, no, cats don't like cars. He said....wait for it....WHY?

His first why. I'm so proud. And scared.

In two weeks

No, my next question is not why don't cats like cars. What I would like to know, and this may be a really simple one, but I'm a gonna do it anyway, is: why do we call the western world, western and the eastern, eastern?

Why am I so tired?

I said I would post each week...I didn't say it would always be a formal question and answer. This week has gotten the better of me. I lied about documenting my son's science experiment. It didn't happen. And I actually have a lot of other writing projects to do at the moment, so the whole 'blog will get me writing' idea has worked, only now the blog is kinda standing in the way of the other work.

So, I'm thinking that from now on I might post fortnightly, then work on my fiction writing on the alternate weeks. Right now I need to get a short story in before a deadline, so I'm going to make this an alternate week. That way the weeks when I write a post, they will actually be worth reading.

Sorry if anyone was excited about the science experiment. I did, however, buy these books at a book fair yesterday. How awesome are they?

And I have a question for next week.

Why do our hands go wrinkly in the bath?

Next week I'm a gonna answer it. Right now, I gotta get my fiction on.

Why do ostriches put their heads in the sand?

Since you were all (there is someone out there, isn't there?) too shy to come up with a Why this past fortnight, I had to think of one myself. 

I did so last night whilst reading my little boy a book called 'Faster, Faster' about a little girl who rides on her daddy's back in the park and imagines he is all sorts of animals. On one page she imagines he is an ostrich, which is seen on the previous page with its head buried in the sand.

So, I thought, why do ostriches do that? And then I asked my husband, approximately three hours later when the kids were actually asleep and we had time to sit down for about five minutes before we went to bed. "They don't," he said, "it's a myth. I think."

Huh.

So this week's Why is: Why do ostriches bury their heads in the sand, or if they don't, why do people think they do?

It feels strange to just go answering it right away, but here goes. My husband is right. Ostriches don't bury their heads in the sand, exactly. However, they do put their heads in the sand to turn the eggs in their nests, which they build in a hole in the sand.

The nesting hole is built by the male and can be quite large, about 1.5 - 2.5 metres wide and 0.5 - 1 metre deep. Despite the size of these holes, the vast expanses of desert landscape ostriches live on mean that from a distance, the nests and eggs are not usually visible. So with their long necks and all that shimmering sand, it does appear that the big bird is sticking its head in the sand.

If an ostrich sees a predator, it will run, abandoning the nest. However, this is really in the best interest of the eggs, as it will lead the predator away. The ostrich can then return when the coast is clear.

Ostriches lay between 40 and 100 eggs in a year. Busy, busy birds.

Oh my Science!

Next week I'm going to document a science experiment that my little boy tried out at Playcentre the other day. It's all about the weight of liquids and the like. It should be fun. Tune in.

Why do trees lose their leaves in Autumn?

Winter Trees

BY William Carlos Williams

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

Like some animals, deciduous trees go into a sort of hibernation state in colder weather. Producing and maintaining leaves is an expensive business, requiring a good deal of sunshine and moisture. Leaves contain nutrients that a tree needs to survive. These nutrients are derived through photosynthesis, so the tree can't get them from the soil. 

Trees know their environment well and pre-empt the upcoming winter (or, interestingly, the dry season in warmer climates), absorbing the nutrients from their leaves as the weather starts to get cooler or dryer, but before the leaves can be damaged by the unfavourable weather.

The main nutrient the tree sucks up is Chlorophyll. This is the nutrient that gives a leaf its green colour. Once it's gone, the other nutrients in the leaf become visible, such as caroteins, which are orange and yellow, and phycoerythrins, which are red. Filled up on Chlorophyll, the tree detaches its leaves and goes into a winter slumber. Thus, the golden and amber leaf drop of Autumn!

In a New Zealand winter, there is a lot of rain and the temperature barely drops below zero, unless you're up a mountain. This might explain why our native trees are mostly evergreens. They get enough rain and light to keep their leaves through the cold weather. 

In other climates that have very cold winters, such as North America, some trees have adapted to become evergreen so they can survive through a longer winter. They do this with needle-shaped leaves, which retain water that on a broader leaf would be lost to wind and evaporation from the sun. These trees stay evergreen so they have more chance to carry out photosynthesis all year round, and thus survive.

Clever old trees, so different from us humans. I tend to lose weight in the summer, when it feels too hot for stodgy food, and pack it on when the weather is cold. This makes sense too, since I don't hibernate and have to carry on through the wind and rain. A little extra weight to help me through the colder months? It's only natural. Yeah, I like that excuse. Pass the Tim Tams..

What's my Why?

It's been a busy week, too busy to wonder why, so I thought I would leave this one up to the readers. Can you suggest a Why for my next post in the comments? I need to take a weekend off to work on another project, so the next post will be in two weeks time. Gives you plenty of time for wondering...

Why is a street called a street and a road, a road?

Wanna know what this blog is all about? Click here to read the initial post and learn why we are learning.

How many metres must a road stretch down, before you call it a road? The answer, my friend...is it's not to do with the length. Ahem, sorry Bob.

Well, not exactly anyway, although a road is usually longer than a street. A road used to run between two towns and didn't have any buildings on it. Historically, roads weren't paved and were created for transit purposes only.

A street on the other hand was paved and created for living on, for meeting, for shopping, for walking. Streets made up the towns and roads connected them.

If you look at my hometown, Auckland, you will see this is no longer true, as a lot of the main roads in the city are developed now. However if you think of our fair city just fifty years ago, before urban sprawl attacked it, you can see the main arterials like Great North and Great South Roads were just that, roads leading from the central city to the north and south.

What about the other names? 

• An avenue is supposed to be the label for a straight road lined in greenery. 
• A boulevard was (and in most cases, still is) wide and multi-laned, with a central median and landscaping on either side. 
• A crescent is a crescent shape, often intersecting with the same road at both ends. Saying this, not all crescent shaped roads are called crescents (the 'avenue' I live on included). 
• A lane is often one-way, or at least very narrow.
• A court is a short cul-de-sac.
• A way is a minor street in a town.
• A drive could be one of two types of roads: either a long and windy road, or it could be short for a driveway, or private access road. 

However, most of these definitions don't apply to the modern city, and these days the names of roads are probably determined more by what rolls off the tongue than the actual use and shape of the street.

Next weeks' Why?

In New Zealand with its temperate climate, the majority of native plants are evergreens, and in the North Island at least, our seasons have a tendency to blur together. This means we don't get the dramatic 'falls' of such places as New England in the USA. Saying this, the Queenstown Lakes District does it pretty well. Ah, Arrowtown. 

Anyway, enough dreaming. This week's Why is pretty simple.

Why do (deciduous) trees lose their leaves in Autumn?

Now I must love and leave my computer to help my husband with my two grizzling children. Happy questioning!

Why do we sometimes see the moon in the daytime?

I actually find this one really hard to get my head around, but it's one of those fundamental things everybody who lives on Earth should know. Once upon a time this stuff was cutting edge. Cute little ink-smudged newsboys stood on street corners calling, “Earth spins on its axis! Read all about it!”

Okay, maybe I've been watching too many movies. Still, we live on Earth so we should know how it works, especially if we happen to be parents – our kids' first teachers.

The basics are: The Earth spins on its axis, but it also travels around the sun. The moon spins on its own axis too, but more slowly than the Earth does, and it orbits the Earth. The Earth takes a day to spin on its own axis and a year to travel around the sun.

The moon is basically a rock, so it doesn't shine. We see the moon because light from the sun bounces off it. The moon appears to change size and shape because we see different parts of it as it completes its orbit, depending on where the sun is in relation to it. A full moon happens when the sun and moon are at opposite sides of the Earth, so the light from the sun shines directly onto the moon's surface. A new moon happens when the moon is at its closest point to the sun.

The moon is actually often in the sky at some point during the day, but it isn't visible because the light from the sky washes it out, or it might be behind some cloud cover.

So basically, the moon isn't just a magical globe that comes out at night, it's just that's when we see it best because the dark sky contrasts against it. When we see it during the day, that is probably because it is traveling away from the sun, so is brightly lit at that point and in one of its larger phases, and the sky is blue.

Traveling the streets and the avenues

This week's Why is probably more likely to come from the mouth of a curious eight-year-old than a toddler, but it's one of those things that often crosses my mind when I'm driving, but I've never gotten around to finding out the answer. Which is what this blog is all about...

So, why are some streets called streets, some roads or avenues, etc? Is it to do with the width of the street, or the length or shape? 

Next week, no excuses, I will journey this road of knowledge and impart my newfound wisdom.  

Why haven't I written anything?

In case anyone is paying attention, we have had no internet so I couldn't post on the weekend! However, I'm working on the daytime moon post...hopefully tomorrow, if my 5-month-old behaves himself and naps for a couple of hours. Don't hold your breath.

And I know, I could have written the post with no internet, using books and stuff. But I didn't. So there.

Why do we have candles on birthday cakes?

Wanna know what this blog is all about? Click here to read the initial post and learn why we are learning.

It's a bit sad when the number of candles on your birthday cake represents decades instead of years. With all those years behind you, have you ever wondered - why the candles? Then today is your lucky day.

Artemis

It turns out there are a few potential reasons why we light candles on birthday cakes, but the tradition seems to stem back to Ancient Greece. The Greeks would offer up round cakes to the moon goddess Artemis, adorned with lit candles to make them appear more moon-like. What this has to do with birthdays, I'm not sure; maybe it just sparked a whole cake-candle trend.

In old world Germany, people used to place a candle on their cakes to symbolize 'the light of life'. This is closer to the modern birthday way, celebrating time passed, with happy wishes for the future.

The tradition of having a party on your birthday stems back to a time when people thought they were vulnerable to attacks from evil spirits on the anniversary of their birth, so they would gather together in large numbers, so the ghoulies were less likely to approach. Perhaps that's why the cakes were made - to feed the hungry spirit-warders.

Some cultures believe the smoke from the candles will either ward off evil spirits or carry their wishes up to the gods. Some believe your wish will come true only if you blow them all out in one puff, while others will claim the number of candles left burning correlates to the number of boy/girlfriends the birthday person is in relations with at the time. Or was that just my family?

Candles feature pretty highly in the world of traditions - think the lighting of the menorah for the Jewish holiday of Hannukah, or the lighting of votive candles in the Catholic church - but whatever the religious reason, I reckon this can be put down to one basic fact: people love fire. Don't tell you toddler that though, you might give him ideas.

Mooning around

This week's Why is a real-life one, as in it came from the mouth of an actual child. On a field trip with my toddler's Playcentre, some kids were looking up at the moon, which was as clear as a French-manicured fingernail against the blue sky. Why can you sometimes see the moon during the day? asked one small, inquisitive being. Like the moon appearing from behind the clouds on a dark night, all will be revealed next week.

Why does our hair turn grey?

This may be a short post. Kid-induced sleep deprivation is making my eyes too blurry to type and my brain too mushy to think, but, it turns out, probably not turning my hair grey.

The most interesting thing I found out in this week's research (which, I have to admit, has not been quite as thorough as last week's, due to babies and their midnight parties) is that grey hair is actually just a combination of white hair (or transparent hair, to be precise) and dark hair. 

So George Clooney's 'salt and pepper' look, as well as having a certain ring to it, is quite aptly named.

Polars bears actually have transparent hairs that reflect the light and appear 

white. Their skin underneath is black to absorb the sun and keep them warm.

What has caused the Cloonster - and Grandma - to go grey? Hair is attached to our heads by roots, which are encased in little tubes of skin called follicles. These follicles are fed colour information from cells called melanin that exist just below the skin's surface. As we get older, the amount of melanin we make slows down, causing some of our hairs to grow without colour. Whether it looks white or grey depends on how many colourless hairs we have and the way the light reflects on them. Very old people often have completely white hair, because there are no coloured hairs left to cause the grey look.

The particular shade of hair you are born with is governed by genetics. The same goes for going grey. If your grandfather went grey at 30, you probably will too, but there are also other reasons why your hair might go grey faster or slower than your brother's, including the climate and level of toxins in your  environment. Stress doesn't seem to have much impact, according to scientists, but I'm sure there are parents, teachers, and perhaps CEOs out there who can look back on photos of more relaxed days and disagree.

I hope that explains it to the adults. For those needing a toddler version, here goes (haaaa):

Hair grows out of our heads from roots, which have colour in them. As people get old, they run out of colour. 

Happy birthday to you

This week we went to a four-year-old's birthday party. Batman was there, but that's another story. My little boy loves birthday parties, mostly because he loves cake. He loves the taste of it, obviously, but he also loves the process of bringing out the birthday cake, the song, the candles, the cutting. So far, he is more interested in the cake than he is in presents.

It is a pretty awesome tradition, especially in a western culture that doesn't have many traditions left.

My Why for this week: why do we blow out candles on the birthday cake? And, although I'm sure a toddler would never ask this, but because I'm curious, is the birthday cake tradition universal?

My big boy on his first birthday

Why do storms produce thunder and lightning?

Stop throwing those blocks at your brother, toddler, here's my explanation of how thunder and lightning works. 

I know you've been waiting all week for the answer to this one, cos you're busy types, too busy to just google it yourself, right? Plus I totally read books (I did, we went to the library). Keep in mind, this is written to be explained to a toddler, so I've gone for simple, but not too simple. I find most toddlers are smarter than you think they are and it's best not to condescend them.

So, the first thing is the weather needs to be quite warm to make a thunder storm, so they mostly happen in spring or summer, but can occur all year round.

The warm, damp air on the ground rises and mixes together with the cooler air up high in the sky and creates a cloud. This lift can happen because of something physical, like a mountain in the way of the air, or because of a front, which is the place where two different air masses meet. A mass of hot air might meet up with a mass of cold air and this would cause the hot air to lift up over the cold air.

So, as the cloud gets bigger and grows even higher up into the sky, some of the drops of water inside it get really cold and turn into ice. The bits of water and the bits of ice crash into each other and make positive and negative electrical energy. When the cloud gets filled up, the electricity starts to escape in the form of lightning.

Think of how the magnets on a train set connect the engines with the cargo. If you hold them a little way away from each other, they jump forward and connect together. Well, the electricity in the cloud is the same. It tries to find somewhere to connect to, somewhere that has electricity in it too.

Sheet lightning, when the whole sky is lit up, happens when the electricity jumps from thunder cloud to thunder cloud. Forked lightning, the zig-zag kind, happens when the lightning hits something on Earth. Often this will be something metal, cos metal things can hold on to electricity.

Lightning is so hot and fast, it moves the air around it, creating a loud bang, which is thunder. We don't hear thunder at the same time as lightning because light travels a lot faster through the air than sound does. If the thunder sounds like a loud clap or bang, it must be close to you. If it's more like a rumble, it must be further away.

And there you have it, thunder and lightning.

A new generation of Nanas

This week, I picked out my favourite picture book, Peepo by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, to read to my 2 year old. I have to admit he's not as into it as I am, but sometimes I like to drag him behind me as I wander down Childhood Lane.

Kids' books have this hilarious way of representing stereotypes, or at least the classics from my generation do. How funny is the burglar in Mog the Forgetful Cat, with his little black eye mask and his striped shirt? Here's an image of him after he's been caught, eye mask hanging shamefully from his fingers while he enjoys a cup of tea with his victims. It took me years to realise burglars don't necessarily wear stripes and people who have been burgled are not usually so generous.

Anyway, Peepo got me thinking about grandmas. To my generation, a grandma looks like the one in Peepo. She's there in the background of this image, hanging out the washing. She's wearing a floral dress and an apron, with her white hair done in a tight perm. That is how I would draw a grandma if I was playing a game of Pictionary, even though mine don't look anything like that. I wonder if my children would recognise that image as a nana, since both of their grandmothers wear modern outfits, not overly different from mine if I'm honest, and have their hair dyed.

Which brings me to this week's Why...

Why does our hair lose its colour as we get older? Does blonde hair turn white and dark hair turn grey? Does stress really make it happen faster?

Tune in next week.

Why is this blog?

As a mother, my intellect is not exactly stretched on a daily basis. I mean, the job description calls for a good deal of organisational skills and an exceptional ability to multi-task, but that’s about as far as it goes, brain-wise. 

Kids require routine and repetition, and a lot of bananas and clean pairs of pants. My children would like me to hold them, rock them and read to them, but they don’t seem particularly bothered by the fact I have a University degree and a mind that is turning to mush. In fact, anything that happened before them matters very little in their golden heads.

So sometimes, just as I fall asleep at night (i.e.: two seconds after my head hits the pillow, approximately 9.38pm), I feel the urge to learn something.

Aside from this yearning for learning, there is a deep-seated fear driving me. Ever met this woman? She can often be seen in supermarkets, pharmacies or playgrounds. She wears the badge of motherhood on her shoulder: burped up milk or a handprint of Marmite. She may still wear maternity clothes despite the fact her youngest child is three years old, because they’re comfortable and because “who has time to shop?”. 

This is all fine and understandable, until you get to her voice. Her pitch is high and it constantly sounds like she is singing a nursery rhyme. She speaks as if to a child, even if she happens to be talking to a high court judge, or the Pope.

She is the epitome of mumdom and SHE IS MY BIGGEST FEAR.

To avoid becoming her and forgetting all else I once was, I have devised this blog. Actually, its purpose is twofold:

1.)   I will avoid childcare-related brain deterioration

2.)   My sons will respect me

Number 2 is simple and relates to the title of the blog. Ever met a kid going through the ‘why phase’? Everything you say, they ask why? Then when you explain, they ask why again. It’s very frustrating, and as the mother of a two year old and a four month old, I plan to be prepared. I figure I don’t have long with the toddler; he’s already asking ‘what’s that mama?’ and following up my explanations with ‘huh?’ (See background image for an example of 'huh?' face).

So in preparation, I have decided to answer a few of my own questions as they occur to me. I will do one per week and I will try to keep this up for at least the rest of the year. The result: my kids will think I know everything. I will learn stuff. Brain stays go-go. Success!

So for my first question:

It's stormy tonight and I have just spent the last two hours lulling a small sniffle-nosed baby into dreamland, which has given my mind a chance to wander (there is a bright side to every situation). As the bedroom was illuminated with flashes of white, I got to thinking about thunder and lightning. I'm pretty sure I had this one sorted a while back, like when I was eight, but right now I’m not exactly sure how it works.

Do thunder and lightning actually occur at the same time and how we perceive them is all about the speed of light and sound, or did I make that up? What causes thunder and lightning?

There are probably some of you out there scoffing, but I’m sure there are also a good number of you just as unclear on this one as I am. If a three year old asked you, would you be able to explain? Answer next week.

PS If you think of a question, please post it in the comments and if I also don't know the answer to it, I will use it in coming weeks.