September is Vegan Mofo, a month of blogging related to vegan food. I signed up last year, and managed to scrape together a few posts without proper planning/adequate time/much sleep, and I enjoyed doing it. So, I decided to give it a go this year, but with proper planning, plenty of time and shit loads of sleep.
Obviously, that didn’t work out. After months of having “Think about Vegan Mofo posts” on my to do list, I have achieved nothing. I haven’t had any sleep, and I don’t have much time. But, damnit, I’m going to manage a few posts somehow.
My daughter is two and a half, and has been vegan since birth. She knows that we are vegan, and she knows that other people aren’t. She knows that we only eat vegan food, and that not all food is vegan. She knows that we only use certain soaps, baby wipes etc because these are vegan, and that not all products are vegan. But she doesn’t really know what vegan means yet.
I’m not about to sit down my two and a half year old and start explaining about rape racks, debeaking and mastitis. She just won’t get it, and I’m already short on sleep so I don’t really want to risk any nightmares.
She’s not old enough to understand death, I know this because I foolishly tried to teach her a life lesson once when I saw a dead hedgehog. She thought I was telling her a cool story and made me repeat it many, many times. I don’t want to end up talking about unwanted chicks from the egg industry repeatedly to a toddler with wide eyes and a smile on her face.
But, the other day, while we were baking fudge, I thought I would try to explain to her what veganism is.
Me: Ebony, do you know what vegan is?
Ebony: I vegan!
Me: Yes, but do you know what that means? It means that we don’t eat animals.
Ebony: Ha! Hahahaha. (she thought this was a hilarious joke)
Me: We don’t eat animals, but other people do.
Ebony: *gasp*
She stayed looking horrified for a few seconds, before turning back to her fudge and telling me that she was vegan again.
You can find out more about Vegan Mofo here.
