My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nine Pancakes

Sean's been obsessed with the solar system lately. It seems that we've been reading and talking about the planets and sun for over a week now. And like any good scholar, he's sufficiently engaged in the subject matter that he discourses at length to any willing, or captive, audience.

"You see, Allie," he began his lecture this evening, "the first planets to be recognized were Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They're named after gods."

"Really, Sean?" answered his enraptured pupil.

"Yes," he continued, stepping carefully around his huge solar system floor puzzle. "And then came the other gas planets, Neptune and Uranus. And Pluto is the smallest planet."

This is where Allie really got excited. She loves Pluto. "PLUTO! There it is!" she exclaimed, pointing to it on the puzzle. "It's a VERY small planet, right, Sean?" (I haven't had the heart to have the Pluto-has-been-kicked-out-of-the-planet-club discussion yet.)

I think I need to brush up on my astronomy if I am to further their celestial education. I can't pick out a constellation other than the Big Dipper to save my life, let alone recognize Venus. It doesn't help that the lights in my area are so bright at night that a clear view of the stars is hard to come by.

It's so cool that they're finding science exciting. Now, how to keep it that way...