The birds and the bees.

So, Jordan will be 8 this spring, and while I never really considered having "the talk" with him, I've heard recently it's best to get it over with early, around 8 or 9... before hormones make it an embarrassing subject, or before schoolmates, in all of their modern day precociousness, beat you to the punch.

Until recently, we've felt fairly confident that Jordan was no where near ready to even be curious about the ins and outs (oh, what a bad pun) of baby making...

It's getting closer though... the moment when Jordan discovers that there's got to be something to it. Take for example, last Sunday. We were watching Prince Of Egypt... the Dreamworks version of the story of Moses. It's well done, mostly historically accurate, and captivating for the kids. It's one of our favorite Sunday movies. So the kids started asking questions about why the Pharaoh wanted to kill all the boy babies, and not the girls. We explained that without boys that would grow up in to men, then the people wouldn't grow and be strong.

So Jordan asks, "Well, why can't the girls just grow up and have more boy babies on their own."

"Ummm, well... they have to get married to have babies, and without husbands to marry, you can't do that."

Jordan's a smart kid. It isn't going to take long for him to realize that sometimes Mommys DO actually have babies without husbands. How'd they get their babies?

The question is beginning to loom large...

Just the other day, we were out walking Carmen (the puppy) through our neighborhood. We happened upon a little boy dog... some sort of a chihuahua/jack russell mix, I think. At any rate, he took quite a liking to Carmen (seriously... he really likes her. He hasn't left my porch in two days), and had a hard time keeping his, ahem, little protruding boy parts to himself. When we came home, I told Josh, in very veiled terms, that were (I thought) totally uninterpretable by the kids, that we needed to be careful and get her spayed as soon as she was old enough. I said,

"We met a little boy dog that really liked Carmen... and I think, if we're not careful before we... we'll wind up with... (insert a telling look and raised eyebrows here.)"

I promise that's all I said. To which Josh responded, "Yeah. We don't want that."

Then Jordan, who was apparently following the entire conversation said, "But I WANT Carmen to have puppies!!"

You thought my eyebrows were raised before?!

Obviously he's starting to figure things out.

Right after Christmas I had lunch with two very dear friends, Jenny, and Glittersmama, that now live too far away for me to ever be truly happy. As luck would have it, when we were on our way home from visiting family over Christmas, we passed through our old stomping ground and were able to miraculously meet for lunch. It was brief, but heartwarming and wonderful and well worth the stop. We were discussing this very subject and one of them, I don't remember which, suggested we just make it a part of the program at Jordan's baptism this spring. Have a talk on Baptism, a talk on the Holy Ghost, and then move right in to the talk on the beauty of life and reproduction. Nice.

At any rate, I'm glad that Jordan is a boy... which means Round 1 of reproductive instruction in the MommyJ household will, for the most part, be handled by Josh.

Good luck with that, dear.