My sweet boy

I think I'm addicted to Hurricane Katrina footage. I try not to watch it when Joseph's around because I don't want to upset him so I watch little bits here and there when he's not in the room or I read about it online. Yesterday though I was watching a story about a town that had been totally wiped out and Joseph caught the very tail end of it. He asked why there was such a big mess on tv. I tried to explain that it was a really big storm that had knocked down the buildings but that sort of thing almost never happened and we were safe and nothing like that had happened to us. He asked if it had knocked down houses and I said it had. He started to look worried so I tried to reassure him that we were ok our house was safe. I could see he was getting upset and I thought he might be worried, remembering the storm we saw in Florida or remembering having to camp out in the basement a few weeks ago during a tornado warning. I kept trying to comfort him but his eyes were getting all filled with tears and his lower lip was trembling. Finally has asked me "But where will all those people live while they fix their houses? Now they don't have beds to sleep in!" Oh my god. First off, show me another 5 year old that would think of something like that. Second, it's really hard to give an upbeat, positive answer to that question when you're trying to keep tears from running down your face.

But I think I answered his questions ok. It's hard to know how much to say because on one hand I want to be able to protect him from having to think about bad stuff like that but on the other hand I know he's going to hear about it somewhere and I would rather he hear when he's with me and able to ask questions about it. It's hard to find a good balance.

This morning when he and I came downstairs he turned the tv on and it had been left on the news so he saw a little bit more (about 10 seconds) before I could shut it off. (It's one thing for him to see a knocked down house but he doesn't need to see coverage of the stuff that's going on at the convention center and what not.) When I turned the tv off he turned to me and frantically asked "What about all the babies?" I was able to give him a good answer this time. I told him I had seen a story about all the new babies in hospitals being taken to other hospitals in helicoptors and airplanes. I was able to tell him that all the babies were safe ...... cause, yeah, there's some things a kid doesn't need to know. He got this sweet look on his face, gave my belly a big hug and said "I'm glad our baby is safe in your tummy away from the hurnicane." What am I going to do with my sweet, sweet boy?