A big day for WhyMommy

I'm taking a break from my SoCal travelogue to participate in this very important event in support of blogger WhyMommy. WhyMommy, whose real name is Susan, is a D.C.-area mom blogger and scientist who was diagnosed with Inflammatory Breast Cancer in 2007. Following a very hard battle, Susan's cancer went into remission. Unfortunately, it came back. Today Susan is having a very important surgery. In support of Susan, who by profession is an astrophysicist, several of us around the blogosphere are participating in a Virtual Science Fair that has been organized by blogger Stimey.

For the Virtual Science Fair, bloggers are supposed to do some kind of science-based activity with their kids and write about it. Our science activity took place last Thursday, when we were still back in Illinois. We were enjoying stellar high temps in the 80s, so Nathan and I headed over to our nearby forest preserve for a walk. It's really called Izaak Walton Forest Preserve, but Nathan just calls it "Nature." As in, "Remember when we were at Nature and we saw those turtles?"

Anyway, here is Nathan at Nature:


He is carrying a bag of bread we brought to feed the ducks/geese, but unfortunately he ended up eating most of it himself:

The science lessons of the day mostly consisted of the following:

• pine cones and other seed pods hold seeds that will hopefully plant new trees
• moss grows on a lot of tree trunks and logs
• when water combines with dirt it makes mud, and if there's enough water there will be a river (which usually happens later in the spring)
• in the spring, trees and plants grow new leaves and blossoms

We also saw the afore-mentioned turtles, which were a little too far away for me to take a decent picture of. But it was the cutest because it was an adult turtle with a baby turtle on its back, and then another adult turtle who jumped into the water. "I think it's a family," Nathan said, which melted my heart in a way that only a mother's heart can melt. I said the adult turtle was probably the mom, but Nathan thought it was the dad, which made Bill happy when I recounted the story to him later. Anyway, that lesson was probably a little more social studies than science, but it was still cute.

I have to admit that science was not my strong suit in high school/college, which is too bad because as a parent I realize that most of a child's daily learning is science-based. Oh sure, we can be all annoying and force them to do worksheets and flash-cards to learn letters and numbers, but a lot of their play centers around learning basic scientific principles. For example, you drop a ball and it goes down. Or, if you dump water from a big container into a smaller one, some of it will spill out. Even Nathan's adorable question upon seeing a dog at the forest preserve jumping into the grossest lake ever, "How can a dog swim if it doesn't have any arms?" is science-based.

Science is all around us, and I know that's a lesson that WhyMommy is glad we're all learning today.

I thought about WhyMommy when I saw this budding plant at the forest preserve. Spring's ability to bring new life out of the dark, barren winter is a symbol of hope. Although my picture of the plant is admittedly blurry, I would still like to send this message of hope to WhyMommy. We are all thinking of you today, Susan.