This week, Thalia damn near bowled me over when she looked up at me through those gorgeous lashes of hers over a bowl of pasta and asked, “Mommy? How was the first baby born?”

The uh…the what?

“How did the first baby get born?”

What makes you ask that honey?

“I was just thinking about babies being born and wondered how the first one got born.”

Did I mention Thalia is five?

Now after silently patting myself on the back for raising a supergenius critical-thinking kindergartener who would have the capacity to even ask a question like that (she gets it from Nate, trust me) I turned to the trusty internets. Because as amazing as her question was, my answer was damn near intelligible. Something about amoebas growing legs and walking out of the ocean and getting taller over thousands of years and inventing the wheel. I might have mentioned the Darwin Awards. And Woolly Mammoths.

“Hold on…” I said. Then I pulled out my laptop and clicked over to some dandy PBS videos about evolution.

Thalia sat there in awe, mouth agape, watching breathlessly as she learned about things like natural selection and the difference between relatives and ancestors; then asked me to replay the requisite animated sequence of the monkey morphing into a a man-like monkey about four times.

It was like watching someone’s brain explode. 

I liked it.

Then I realized, I got off easy. I didn’t have to talk to her about how babies get made. I’d imagine my answer would also be something about amoebas with legs. Which really, isn’t so far off from the truth.

What are the hard questions your kids have asked?