June 12, 2008

Blah.

That's right. BLAH.

Three days of silence, and all I have is "blah"? Yes, that's right. Want to know why? Because our home was infiltrated this week by the sick. The pukey, high fever, whining, miserable sick.

Needless to say, there has been no animal-book-making happening here this week.

Today, both kids were starting to perk up a bit. No vomit, no temperatures. Just some over the top hysterics at the drop of a hat, I think because the sick has left the children a little tired. But by this afternoon, we were pretty much back to normal. With cautious optimism, I even packed up the wee ones and took Isabel to her first soccer practice this afternoon. She desperately needed to be OUT after being cooped up all week, and she did great.

This afternoon, discussion of the sick led us to look up the digestive system. As soon as I got around to mentioning that unused food is passed from our bodies as poop, Isabel was hooked. Yay, poop! We looked as illustrations of the digestive system, talked about how nutrients are converted to energy by our bodies and, of course, all about poop.

We also talked about that some creatures have more than one stomach. Apparently, this was a fascinating revelation and we discussed cows and bees, which then further continued into a discussion about how honey is made. Did you know that bees chew nectar in order to make it into thick, sticky honey? I didn't. Bees tongues are also hollow, like straws, and that's how they suck up nectar from flowers.

Isabel's most urgent inquiry was whether bees collect nectar from dandelions. I would have thought no, but it turns out that they do.