The Push

I'm going to take a shower and then it's time to get dressed and then do school.

K.

OK, I'm out of the shower. Time to get dressed and make your bed.

Whhhyyyyyyyy?

Because I said so.

Can't I just play a little longer??????

*sigh* Determined not to have a repeat of yesterday where school was procrastinated all the way until after dinner, I pushed back. Several time outs later we finally finish a phonics lesson and a math lesson. And then we did Science. Yesterday was supposed to be science day but we never got around to it. I had told Cameron that for Science we would talk a little bit about the reproductive systems and really look at what has happened and is happening in my body. I keep being afraid that they will walk in on me in the bathroom and see the blood and be freaked out by it. I felt that I really needed to explain what has happened and clarify that the blood is the lining of the uterus and not the baby's blood or something horrid like that. Anyway, since we never got around to that yesterday, Cameron asked - begged really - to do Science today. He said he really wanted to know what was happening inside my body.

So we went over ovulation and fertilization (and thank goodness he did not think to ask how the egg and the sperm get together even though they are made in different people!) which we have discussed before, and how the lining of the uterus builds up and sloughs off each month and how that will happen to Cassia too once she becomes a woman, which we had never talked about before. She seemed to gain a certain amount of pride from that secret womanly knowledge. We talked about implantation in the lining and looked at some sketches of developing embryos. I told them that our new baby stopped growing at about this size (while pointing at a 5-wk old embryo) and then flipped back to the picture of the empty uterus and said that once that happened, my body shed its lining once more to begin preparation for a new, healthy baby just like it does every other month. I tried to stress the normalcy of the whole process but told them that that's why I'm tired and a bit cranky because it's a lot of work for my body to do all this. It's made me sore and tired, as well as sad. They seemed to understand.

And then of course that led to the usual marveling that a newborn baby can actually got out of that tiny space!! I think it hit Cameron especially hard since I said that it made my body ache to get that tiny embryo out, he suddenly gasped and said, "A full grown baby comes out that way too?!??!?!?" LOL, be thankful you're a man. ;) But then that was a nice progression to just talking about babies in general which is always a welcome conversation. Greyson walked in the room at just the right time too. I think the sadness of the whole affair is dampened by the fact that we do still have a baby wandering around to marvel at. We talked about the bones in a baby's skull. We talked about umbilical cords. We talked about lots of stuff. It was a nice conversation and I'm glad we had it.

Next was History and we read SOTW Chapter 3 on the first writings in Egypt and Sumer. The kids colored pictures of a scribe chiseling hieroglyphs into a stone. They found Egypt and Sumer on a map. Cassia and I made clay tablets with our names in cuneiform but Cameron didn't want to get his hands dirty so he wrote his name in hieroglyphics on a paper scroll. We also read the Egyptian creation story of the Benu Bird which kept Cameron's interest surprisingly well. He thought it was hilarious the way things were formed and they were both excited to see gods that they recognized in the drawings. I am willing to bet that they wouldn't be remembering a single Egyptian god if it were not for our Egyptian god dolls. Yeah me!

So school was done, with an extra subject even, by 2:30 and I only had to threaten him a few times, lol. Actually, after being sent to his room for three consecutive time outs for having a bad attitude he was quite happy to cooperate in the end. ;)