I came out of that awful weekend 3 pounds lighter. It was the most painful way to lose 3 pounds I've ever experienced. I'm still coughing, and every so often I get a little dizzy and nauseous. But otherwise I'm okay (fingers crossed). As far as the pregnancy goes, I'm now +14 lbs. I hate all my clothes.
The last few evenings I've spent every spare minute lying on the couch, typing on my laptop, trying to help Alex with his science project. It was hard going because the typing made me dizzy. I'm glad to say it's finally done! There's a big foldout poster board with his research question, conclusion, and everything in between, as well as an awesome video. I can't share it here because it's got too much personal identification all over it, but if you want to come to the science fair tomorrow night, it's going to playing on a loop in front of his poster board.
I nagged Kevin more than usual the last few days because I thought as Mr. Science, he should have done more to help Alex on this project. As it were, I set up the experiments, wrote the script, designed the visual aids, and edited the video. All the boys had to do was follow my instructions. Finally it was a confession on my part that made Kevin realize why I thought he should have done more of the work: I've never done a science project before.
This blew Kevin's mind. He had always thought of his wife as Ms. Academia, and it simply never occurred to him that I would have missed out on such a basic staple of the typical American childhood. I didn't know what to tell him. I remember thinking as a kid that I would like to do a science fair project, but I didn't know how, and I didn't have anyone to help me. Over the years it became one of many things that made me feel like an academic fraud. But now that I've done my first science fair project, I can safely put some of those feelings of inadequacy behind me.
Labels: parenting, pregnancy
2 Comments:
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At 5:41 AM, Rita said…
Mm. The two science fair projects I ever did were so uninspired and embarrassing, I felt like an academic fraud for sure. (That's exactly the feeling!) For one, I bought a small prism and taped a flashlight to shine through it. And that was after much self-torturing for ideas.
What were the prize winning projects? :)
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At 9:47 AM, Julie said…
No prizes, but a lot of kids participated anyway. The auditorium was packed!
Alex's project was on gravity and air resistance. Kevin videotaped him conducting experiments and I edited it into a movie with voice-over and sub-titles.
The movie caught a lot of people's attention. They'd try to predict the outcome of the experiments and end up guessing WRONG!
Also, I noticed a couple of other things: Alex's display was one of only a handful that 1. included background research and 2. was printed on a computer. I kept thinking, doesn't everybody own a computer and printer these days?
