Lions and Tigers and...

Yesterday as we were running errands, we walked past a Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese (seriously, I swear there were different sections on the menu) restaurant that had lion statues out in front. These guardian lions have gem balls inside their mouth that can roll around but not be removed; in this case they were a beautiful marble.

Eliana and Kes stopped and wanted to play with the lions; specifically, Eliana wanted to remove the ball from the lion's mouth. It was hot. We'd been walking a while. I am pregnant. Therefore, I didn't really feel like stopping (20 feet from the air conditioned store that we were about to walk into) to wait for her to finally give up on the impossible (which takes her quite a while). Eliana gave me the perfect opportunity:

"Mommy, why does the lion have a ball in its mouth?"
Me: "Oh, that's what makes it a statue. If the magic ball comes out it'll turn back into a real lion."
Elly: "No, Mommy. That's just pretend. Statues are just statues, they don't turn real."
(Inner monologue: Dangit! Who gave you permission to outgrow fantasy already? There are real advantages to your maturing into a 5 year old but this is not one of them... Maybe I can be persuasive enough to appeal to leftover 4 year old fantasy...)
Me: "Most statues, yes. But these ones are real lions that just have magic balls to make them statues. I don't want to take a chance that the lion will come to life and eat all of us."
Elly: (stops playing with the ball and walks quickly in the direction of the store) "I don't want the lion to eat me."
A minute passes, we reach the store.
Elly: "But if the lion ate all of us, and we were all in the lion's belly, it would be nice that we were still together. (Pause.) But that would hurt when the lion ate us, so I don't want that."


On that note, today Eliana was remembering that I told her a special surprise trip is in store for her tomorrow. (We are going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.)
She said, "Mommy, let's go to Tilden Park tomorrow!"
Me: "We're going somewhere you've never been before, and it's a surprise."
Elly: "Is it the jungle?"
Me: "Nope, not the jungle."
Elly: "Oh good, cuz there are tigers there."
Kes: "And they would eat us all up."