baby wayne

Otis has always liked to look at the moon, and has recently become obsessed with the solar system. He can now name all of the planets, and often says things like "Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun" and "Jupiter has many moons". Tonight, he was telling Justin and I about "the mystery of the night sky".

All of the books and dvds we have about the solar system are more than a year old, and so have Pluto included as a planet. In 2006 Pluto was reclassified as a "dwarf planet" and this has prompted discussion as to what we should be teaching Otis. It seems wrong to tell him that it's a planet when it really technically isn't, but now that he knows about it, how do we explain to a 2 year old that the International Astronomical Union has excluded it based on a redefinition of the term "planet"?

So, tonight when making a mobile of the Solar System we decided to include it, dangling there on the end. So many of the things we say and do with Otis are truths stretched or altered for our own purposes, and this will be one of them, to be undone at some later time.