One of the goals for this blog is to share the funny, everyday musings of life with five and six year olds. I think I'll start with how my kiddos reacted when I told them that I was going to have a baby. Let me preface this with the fact that I am sooooo lucky this year to have quite a few students with new brothers and sisters in their homes. So a number of them have a pretty good picture of how this all works... according to their five year old brains ;)
I was not quite ready to have this conversation with them yet. I had not yet prepared answers to inevitable questions. The day before, a few of the moms had noticed my growing belly and I guess had discussed with over dinner with the family. While reading about about pumpkins, I paused to ask my students a question about the book when one of my little girls raised her hand to answer. I called on her, and instead of answering the question she very loudly announced, "My mom says you are going to have a baby!" Okay... I waited for the complete derailment to settle a little and when I had their attention again, I confirmed the news of the day.
I went on to explain how excited I was and told them when she was supposed to be getting here and that I'm still their teacher... etc. They were pretty excited. I let them know that my belly would be getting bigger and bigger and that it would be hard for me to bend over and get things off the floor and that it would be dangerous to leave things on the floor. One of my sweet boys was concerned about how big I would get and said, "Well Mrs. St. Germain... you COULD exercise." Very cute, chuckle to myself and explain that, of course I could, but my belly would still get pretty big.
I also had to explain that at recess, we need to be very careful not to run into me. Quick interruption from a new big brother with a baby sister at home, "That's right, because babies are FRAGILE! They can't be shaken or dropped or run into... even girl babies AND boy babies are FRAGILE!" I wonder what kinds of conversations they are having about the 3 month old baby sister at their house ;)
Then came the inevitable question, "Well how is the baby going to get out?" Hmmmmmm... pause, think... saved by another new big brother! One of my little boys pipes in, "Well, my mom just went to St. Lukes. She had to change clothes and get on a bed thing and then they rolled her into a room and me and dad sat in the waiting room and then they CUT HER! Then we saw my baby brother in the nursery window!" My response, "Yes class, that's exactly how it happens!" Whew! Saved by the five year old. The rest of the class just shrugged their shoulders, like "Okay, now I know, no big deal." So funny.
They were soooo not concerned about how the baby got in there... didn't care at all... whew ;)
