Meet the Dinosaur Family

At one point, we were the Bear Family, with the following cast members:

Kayla = Baby Bear
Jocelyn = Kayla Bear
Me = Mommy Bear
George = Daddy Bear
Libby = Libby Bear

But these days, Kayla is all about dinosaurs, thanks to a PBS Kids show called Dinosaur Train.


For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of sitting through an entire episode of Dinosaur Train with Kayla, I shall enlighten you with an overview. It's about a family of pteranadons: Mr. & Mrs. Pteranadon and their children Tiny, Shiny, Don and Buddy. Buddy is actually a T-rex whose egg made its way into the Pteranadon's nest, so he was adopted because "We may be different but we're all creatures. All dinosaurs have different features" (although I believe some of the earlier episodes were slightly different, with something like "We're all God's creatures and we all have features."). The Pteranadon family loves to ride the Dinosaur Train, which travels all over the world and even travels through magic Time Tunnels to visit the different dinosaur species from all different time periods.

Needless to say, I have learned more about dinosaurs than I ever cared to know. And let me tell you, the info out there on dinosaurs has changed a TON since I was a kid. While I can't recall ever studying dinosaurs formally in school, the only species I ever remembered hearing about were tyrannosaurus, brachiosaurus and brontosaurus. When Jurassic Park came along, I probably learned about velociraptors. And that was the extent of my dinosaur knowledge. George was no help, either, because as a boy he was into cars and airplanes. But Little Miss Kayla can tell you all about how T-Rex is a carnivore (or "carni-bore" as she pronounces it) and they like to eat meat, especially carrion, which is the dead and rotting body of an animal. She likes to pretend to cook carrion in her toy kitchen and makes us all eat it. Kayla can tell you that herbivores ("herbi-bore") like to eat trees and leaves, and there's even a brachiosaurus that sings a song about how he's a hungry, hungry, herbivore, plants are what I'm hungry for which I get stuck in my head ALL THE TIME and find myself humming at odd times of the day. Kayla knows that T-Rex and pteranadons lived in the Cretaceous ("Pi-tay-cious") time period. Buddy, the T-Rex, likes to make a hypothesis ("hi-pock-a-sis") about the species he visits in each episode and so Kayla will walk around saying, I have a hi-pock-a-sis, you run fast because your legs are longer!

Currently, it seems that the Huang family is another blended family of some sorts. Jocelyn is Tiny, the smallest of the Pteranadon kids. George is Buddy, the T-Rex. Buddy didn't know which species he was until he visited Mrs. Tyrannosaurus and her daughter, Annie. Mrs. Tyrannosaurus, or Dolores, likes to call for her daughter in a big loud voice, and Annie responds similarly. Guess which pseudonym Kayla picked for herself -- Dolores. I get to be Annie, and every time Mrs. Tyrannosaurus yells that it's dinner time, or company's coming, I have to yell back in my best T-Rex voice, "Coming, Mom!!"

No wonder Jocelyn has been so slow to talk. All these changes in names are hard to keep up with!! Is she Jocelyn, Jocie, Mei-Mei, Kayla Bear or Tiny? Who knows? I can't even keep track of who I am most days!