Awesome Science Mix

This is the hardest damn post to start; the temptation to wax poetic about the vagaries of life is overwhelming but does nothing to advance or introduce my point of today which is that my kids are awesome. Huh, that worked out better than I thought. Anyways, some cool things happened last week that I thought were pretty, uh, cool, that were totally the kids and not me and therefore much more interesting. And awesome. Ahem.

Unpacking Noah's book bag last Wednesday, I came upon a worksheet. His preschool/camp program has spent August getting the rising kindergartners back into the school swing by having them unpack their own lunchboxes, practice writing their letters and numbers and, most important (to me) work on their handwriting in general. Lines are still a quasi-foreign concept to him and keeping letters in a line and not 3/4 of the page in size has been a work in progress. But lo, what hath August wrought? It hath wrought worksheets with the vowel sound correctly identified and names - FULL NAMES. FIRST AND LAST - written completely and correctly and on a line! The boy can write a lowercase 'g'! This is cause for celebration! And balloons! And confetti!



The pride wellethed up and spilled over into my wineglass. It was delicious.

Later that night at dinner, we were talking about our days. Noelle has asked questions about my job before so she knows that I taste a lot of chemicals. No, really. That's what I do. Best diet plan ever and as a bonus I now glow in the dark. Anyways, she changed up the question on me this time: where do the chemicals you use come from? Well, there are companies that manufacture the chemicals we buy and.... No, I mean where do they get the chemicals from? How are they made? And with that, right there at the table they say, Mommy's science-loving heart grew three sizes that day. Thus began a good 15-minute conversation on how chemicals are made and how natural and artificial differ. Well the natural piece called to her and from there we went on to how different plants are harvested for different products and how even different parts of the same plant can yield different chemicals and from there the conversation turned to Big Agriculture. It was one of the best dinner conversations I've ever had and I couldn't be more proud that my kid makes those connections between what I do and what must come before.

Pretty good day, amirite? Well last evening was the Piece of Resistance. One of the steps for putting Noah to bed is to go over the behavioral rules he has to follow followed by 5 questions. I was digging the bottom of the barrel for these as unless the question is about his favorite color (blue) or game (football) the answer is usually 'My brain isn't thinking' which as you can imagine is not at all annoying when trying to hold up your end of the bargain. So I asked him, what would you like for your birthday? (A leading question as I already have his gifts.) (Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I'd go out and get what he really wanted.) It was...the Lego Movie motorcycle and cop car chase scene set. AND I ALREADY HAD IT.  I win at life.

I hope that the awesome flows on to you because SCIENCE. And confetti.