Love is...

One of my favorite homeschool memories from this year happened a few months ago when my son and I were dissecting a worm. I have never been a fan of this particular branch of science... I'm not particularly squeamish, normally, but dissections really give me the heebie-jeebies for some reason. I don't really know why. I do know that as we began that day, I had in my mind that it would be mostly him doing the cutting, and I would sit by as the "guide," instructing him and pointing out what, um, we were seeing. It became evident once we got going that things were being cut that needed to be intact, and that it required a degree of dexterity that he, at 9, does not yet possess... so I took a deep breath, grabbed a scalpel, and dug in (so to speak.) Both of our faces were about as close to the specimen as he is in the picture above, practically pressed together so he could see as I was trying to locate and explain the intestines and reproductive organs of a worm, when he turned to me and said, "Mom, you must really love me!"

Yes! In that moment he "got it." He gets why I do what I do. Not because I'm some sort of expert with knowledge to impart, or even that I have a particular love for whatever subject we're studying. I love... him. That's why we dissect worms and frogs, diagram sentences, look for stars and planets, s-o-u-n-d...o-u-t...w-o-r-d-s, drill math facts, clean papier mache off of the walls, and the myriad of other things that homeschooling requires. I LOVE my kids!

Here's another favorite dissection picture from that day:

Say, "A-h-h-h-h-h"

Oh... and to show that I am growing as a person, here's a picture of the dissection he did today. I would like to add that I didn't even flinch at ALL:

Poor old scanner...