Decoding Kidspeak (I think)

A couple of days ago, I was in the kitchen cooking dinner when Nathan came in the front door and began removing his shoes (the usual method of using the toe of one shoe to hold down the heel of the other--no wonder shoes have short lives at our house). As he finished, he announced animatedly to me, "Mom! I'm breeding."

Surely I didn't hear that correctly. "What did you say, Nathan?"

"I'm breeding."
"Okay. (pause) What are you breeding?"
"Pokemons!" (with a destinct "Duh!" on the end of it)
"Uh...er...you can breed them? How does that work?" (not sure I will like this answer; I really would prefer my children did not learn the details of the birds and the bees from little Japanese pictographs)

He went on to explain how this is done in terms I was not entirely familiar with, which actually put my mind at ease. I keep thinking I am so "with it" as a mom. I finally understand webkins (pretty much); Nathan and Daniel taught me how to do Picto-chat on the DS; and I know what it means to "verse" someone. But this breeding thing was definitely new territory. We've moved from reading groups to breeding groups. I decided to check into this a bit online and found that there are whole websites devoted to properly matching up your pokemon creatures for breeding. If you want to know everything I know, follow this clue. There is a detailed sorting of Pokemons into breeding categories. What I found most interesting about this was the fact that the "Mineral" group and the "Indeterminate" group (don't you love that label?) were both separate from the "Cannot Breed" category. Apparently, you can breed minerals and indeterminates, as long as they're pokemons. The other interesting thing was the link to a site for finding "Hot & Smart" egg donors (the real kind). Hmmm... not a site I want the kids browsing on their own.

Looking at the picture above, I'm starting to feel quite concerned about a possible Pokemon invasion. Will there be room left for us slower-breeding humans when all the Pokemon breeding is done? And does anyone have a good Kid-to-English dictionary? Sometimes this decoding work is troublesome.