Yesterday, we took a family trip to Sesame Place on the way home from the weekend Bar Mitzvah. I have to be honest, I am generally not an amusement park type person. Growing up, we were not a family that frequented Disney or Great Adventure. But I liked Sesame Place. I liked how it drew an extremely diverse group of people. I liked how the place was filled with little kids - really little. I liked how Anna could go on most of the rides, even though she is only four. I liked how the place was teeming with strollers.

And I liked to see how young and innocent my daughter still is. Even though she certainly carries more baggage than other kids her age - and she is learning more and more about her personal story as she grows older, she is still really and truly only four years old. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that fact.

When we got there, the first character she saw was Zoe (a Spanish speaking muppet on Sesame Street). (By the way - it was about 95 degrees yesterday - they better pay these people a nice sum to walk around dressed in a muppet fur costume in that heat!) Anna beckoned to me and asked if it was really Zoe. Now, I'm all for telling kids the truth as far as they can handle it, and I'm not into making up stories just for them to find out that it's all made up (i.e. the tooth fairy). But at that moment, I remembered that there is something to this idea of make believe and innocence. And so I asked her what she thought - was it really Zoe?

Yes! She replied.

Then it is really Zoe, I said. And so for that day, it was.