Henry! Henry! TWICE! Because he's 2 now.

Some fun things about Henry lately now that he's two:

• Henry loves construction equipment and semi trucks. Trains are fine, but they're nothing compared to "BIG truck!" or "backhoe!" 
• Ever since we went on a walk the day after a big rainstorm, Henry has been very into dead worms. He'll see one on a walk (or really anything that resembles it, like a stain, trash, or part of a leaf) and say, "Oh! Is a dead worm!!" He'll then squat down to look at it and will giggle while he keeps telling us he's found a dead worm. We told him he can't pick them up, so now he refuses to walk close to them or on them and will back up and go around them in a big circle (staring at them the whole time) to avoid them. We can use that as a way to get him to move along, too, "Henry, I think I see a dead worm up here! Let's go look!" He likes live worms (and slugs) even better but you just don't see those as often.
• He's also very into rocks. He likes to carry them around, stack them up, and especially throw them in water. He found a dead worm near the door to our storage room in our carport and brought over all the rocks from the garden to put on the ledge of the door. I like to think he was making a little shrine.
• We went on a brief trip to Pennsylvania recently for a test James had to take there, and in sharing a room with Henry as he fell asleep, I learned that he whispers to himself after we lay him in bed before sleep takes over. We heard him across the room whispering, "Hot dog...fruit snacks....cheeeeeeeseburger..."
• He's a very chatty fellow! He's using more words in more ways every day and I love love love it. Some of my favorite funny things he says are: "No WAY!!" (especially when he says it calmly..."Do you want a cracker?" "No way!"); "Help you" (we ask him often, "can I help you with that?" so now when he asks for help, he just says, "Help you?"); "come here" (this means he wants to sit on our lap); "Hold you" (he wants me to hold him while STANDING - the STANDING part of this is important); and pretty much anytime he tries to say "frog" or "fork" because he sounds like we're teaching him definitely non-toddler words.
• He calls watermelon "water-minute" and it's adorable so we don't correct it. He also calls being upside down "up-oo-san!" Other than these he's actually pretty good with the correct words (minus the inability to say Rs and Ls correctly).
• A few days ago he was drinking an open cup of milk and deliberately threw it onto his high chair tray. I told him that wasn't very nice, cleaned up, and gave him what remained in the cup. He then deliberately threw it on the ground and while I was cleaning it up I said, "Aww, man..." and he started repeating that. "Aw man! Aw man!!" Then as I cleaned up the ground, I looked up at him and said, "Henry, you're in trouble!" He said gleefully, "Twouble!!" I said, "What is this mess!?" He peered over his chair to the ground and said, "Is a oopsie!!"
• A couple of months ago, our cashier at the dollar store was a teenager with long hair and a scraggly looking beard. As we were leaving, Henry yelled, "Bye bye, Jesus!!" About 5 minutes later I realized I'd left my wallet in the store, so we called the store and he found it and kept it safe for us until we got back. Sounds like Henry can spot the good ones!
• Like any good two year old, he likes holding whatever I'm holding, always touching me in some way, making faces, and discussing farts. He will always rat you out if you fart, either in the moment or later. "Dadda, is a fart!" Even hours later. "Dadda, Momma fart!!" Thanks, kid.
• He has always been a big supporter of belly buttons. He likes to pull up our shirts to poke them. As my belly gets bigger with this pregnancy, he sort of understands that there's something about my tummy that involves a baby, and it's probably the belly button. I'll say, "Give the baby a hug!" and he'll pull up my shirt and rest his head on my belly button. Some pregnant women get the outie belly button as their stomachs get bigger, but my belly button just expands into a sort of cavern. Glamorous, right? A few weeks ago when Henry was looking at my belly button, he pointed to it and yelled, "Momma! A tunnel!"
• He loves being outside and he loves playing in water. He has some cups and toys for the bath and will happily spend 15 minutes playing in the bathroom sink with them. Taking a bath, eating watermelon, or eating fruit snacks are our number one bribes around here.
• When we found out I was pregnant but hadn't told Henry yet, he did something remarkable. I was laying on the couch and he came up to me, poked my belly, and said, "Baby!" And ran off to go play. I don't know how he knew there was a baby at all, or that it was in my stomach right then, but he knew!

Semester's End for a Teacher...the last one for a while (*sniff*)

Last week was final exam time for my students. I often like to write posts about the last week of classes, and this one is a little bittersweet for me because it'll be my last one on-campus for a while. I'm still going to do some online classes, but since the baby is due right when school starts in the fall, both recovery/newborn/childcare means I won't be physically in a classroom for a while, which is heartbreaking. Also I feel like I never mentioned on the blog or Facebook that our next baby is another boy, but we've told people we're around, so I feel like it's too late at this point and would be awkward to do a whole thing about it, so...anyway,in case you were wondering, boy!

As the end of the semester approaches, I find these memes to be very true:

Students say:

 

Teachers say:


The last day of class (or really the last few weeks, for that matter, and especially not one hour AFTER your final!!) is NOT the time to ask for extra credit. It's not the time to decide to drop the class and be annoyed when that turns out to be difficult. It's not the time for many things. I finally printed out this one (above) and put it on my office door. Maybe students coming to ask for extra credit saw it and it scared them off...! James says I should've made this (below) into a poster instead to scare students off, but life isn't Harry Potter (yet) so I don't get moving pictures on my office door:

One student's plea for extra credit did make me laugh, though, and fortunately it turned out to be easily fixed and not an extra credit problem after all: "No I have an 89?! I need an A worse than I need air to breathe. I will literally do anything for 1 more point. I will even babysit your child. Please Jesus."

I had wonderful moments and students this semester. My favorite moment, though, did not happen in the last week; it happened at the last test before the final, so about a month ago. I always have a few bonus questions at the end of each test, and due to spring break and weather/cancelled class, this particular anatomy test ended up being very, very long and difficult. Poor class. I'm sorry. But this girl's answers on the bonus section cracked me up:

 

And now for my end-of-year comments that I love so much and sometimes share on the blog...also brought to you by test bonus questions. I love my students and will miss being with them. These are from both my anatomy and intro to biology classes. Enjoy! (My comments are in parentheses.)

Question: What is your favorite part of the brain and why? (we learned about all the different small parts, like the pons, arbor vitae, medulla oblongata, hypothalamus, etc., so this is what I expected them to say. I should have been more specific!)

Answer: The left side. I think I am left brained. 

Answer: The ponds. (It cracks me up that all this time they thought the "pons" was "ponds")

Question: What was your least favorite topic we covered in anatomy this semester and why?

Answer: I didn't like that one chart we did to see if we carried the same genes as our parents. (We have done many charts in many labs. I love how ONE piece of paper in this whole semester is the worst part of the semester. I'll have to go back and review it...sounds pretty bad!)

Answer: Learning the domain kingdom phylum class order family genus species because it took me forever (I love how they wrote out all these words for this!)

Answer: Cells, I don't enjoy learning about cells!!!

Question: What was your favorite topic of the semester and why?

Answer: The brain because I could almost name parts of the brain that I couldn't do before. (Almost??) 

Answer: Review games before tests!

Answer: I believe they all had the same academic value.

Question: A picture of the rotator cuff muscles in the shoulder (it's pretty obviously the shoulder) and it asks what one specific muscle in the image is called. 

Answer: Leg muscle 

Answer: A hamstring

Answer: The humerus

Question: A picture of a vertebra and it asks them to label two specific parts of it.

Answer: they point to the spinous process (the part that sticks out the back) and label it "axon" (which is part of the nervous system, and NOT one of the two things I asked them to label)

Answer:  another person labelled the spinous process as the coccyx (that's your tailbone. It is not found in your vertebrae, and is also not one of the two locations I asked them to identify.)

Question: List the first three cranial nerves, their number in roman numerals, and indicate whether they are sensory/motor/both.

Answer: Well I know the 12th nerve might be the hypoglossal...

Floods and the Niagara of the South!

A few weeks ago, it rained 4.5" over Saturday/Sunday. (For reference, 1" of rain is the equivalent of ~12" of snow.) It rains a lot here, but this was more than usual. It caused lots of flooding, and many of my students were trapped and couldn't get out of their areas to get to school; in our area, one of the two ways out to the highway from our house was flooded over. In the pictures with the green cones (taken Monday afternoon), the road where you see water is normally a bridge over a medium-sized creek that is usually 5 feet or more below the bottom of the bridge. A friend had been over for dinner the night before this picture was taken (when it was still raining). Fortunately she had a big truck, but she said the water hit the tops of her wheel wells! The blocked road is the first two pictures; the third picture shows the field alongside the road on the other way out from our house that was not blocked. It's normally a grazing area for cattle, with this little creek off in the distance. The water comes clear up to the edge of the road!

This lake/swamp you can see is normally a cornfield.

This is the view along the road from the second way out from our house. The line of trees in the back is where the creek normally is.

The week after all this rain, we decided to go visit Cumberland Falls waterfall in Kentucky (it's only about 90 minutes away and claims to be the Niagara of the South, so how could we not visit?! Especially with all that rain - extra water is a bonus in waterfalls!!). The falls are 68 feet tall and 125 feet wide.

Henry absolutely loved it. He spent the entire time at the falls excitedly yelling, "Wattafall! Watta!! WATTAFALL!!!!! Play water?? Oh, is dirty! Watta!!" on repeat. He loved the noise, the dirty water, the rainbows in the mist (which don't show up in the pictures, sadly), all the climbing on rocks, and the huge waterfall. I hadn't expected him to like it that much, but I think if he could tell us his top 3 favorite experiences of his life, this would be up there, right behind the first time he tried fruit snacks and jumping on his friend's indoor kid trampoline.

This excursion was last weekend (one week after the flooding), and every day for this past week Henry has asked me this question when we get in the car in the morning: "Have fun waterfall today?" We may have to plan a return visit.







Here's a little video of the falls. They don't look that big on this tiny screen, but they were actually pretty impressive!