Anyway, I am home from Mark's with a sore throat and a runny nose, while Rod and Chris (another friend of Mark's) take turns staying with Matthew for the rest of the week.
Last night, as I finished up the dinner dishes, Jack was explaining to me that his lungs were in his throat. We talked about that for a while, and it became clear that he thought his esophagus was his lungs.
I explained that his esophagus was the pipe that brought the air into his lungs, and I showed him how when he took a deep breath, his lungs expanded behind his rib cage. He looked dubious, so we went and got his atlas of the human body and looked it up, discussed it, and -- as happened in these matters -- went on exploring.
We came, soon enough, to the page about the reproductive system. Jack was captivated and before I knew it we were discussing what those parts were for and soon enough, we were paging through my 30-year old copy of Lennart Nilsson's A Child Is Born.
He was extremely curious, but in the end, his final remark was amusing and very telling.
"I'll bet crocodiles have fun coming out of eggs."
"Oh? Do you wish you were a crocodile?"
"Yup."
"Why is that? Do you wish you had been born from an egg?"
"Yes. That's less strange than babies."
My daughter, too, at that age loved to look through Lennart Nilsson's "A Child Is Born". Including the pictures of the baby being born. I was fascinated by her fascination with it.
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