Did it Really Happen?

4 year old Ir is at that fun stage where she always asks "Did that really happen?" It makes for interesting challenges: probably her favorite movie is "Sound of Music," but it is hard to tweak out the real history from the fiction, since the movie is a mixture. So, for example, at the conclusion of the movie, when the family hikes over the Alps to freedom, we had to explain that "Yes, they really did escape from the 'bad soldiers,' but no... in reality they took a train to get away, as the Alps are not near Salzburg." So this week when a friend asked her about what she remembered of the movie... she of course began talking about how the family took a train to escape. OK, Ir... good memory... but that's not in the movie.
This also becomes a challenge with Bible time. T and Ir began a book with catechism questions - one in particular that had fictional stories of kids that illustrated the catechism questions. So of course, Ir wants to know "Are the boys' stories real?" "Well, not exactly... but they do illustrate real truths..." Not a totally satisfactory answer, as you can imagine... and a little later an increasingly skeptical Irene commented while listening to a different catechism booklet with just questions and answers, "Was this written by those two boys?!" Tara discontinued the book for the time being, so as not to confuse in Irene's mind the truth of the catechism questions with the fictional nature of the stories.