Clowns in the Arctic, and octuplets

Today, I had my students write about bears. We've studied polar bears and black bears, and to get us ready to write about them in our journals today we regurgitated what we knew onto a 'double bubble' map (same as a Venn diagram).

Pedro chose to write about Polar Bears, and wrote: "Polar Bears live in the Arctic."
For his picture he drew a .... clown (?) next to a polar bear.
When I noted that we had NOT seen any clowns in the video or books, he sincerely replied:
"But Mrs. ---, there ARE Arctic toys...."
(and he excitedly began to explain to the others waiting in line to read to me about what the bear and the toy were doing...)
(?)(!)
I coulnd't stop it.... I laughed.
Sometimes in kindergarten .... I have to laugh out loud! (It makes me smile even now...)

Elsewhere in the world: On the way home from work I heard on the news that Octuplets were born at Kaiser Permanente today in Bellflower.

Octuplets!

The mother delivered at 30 weeks, and the babies range in weight from 1.8 pounds to 3.2 pounds-- 6 boys and 2 girls, all doing well so far.

The 1.8 pound baby reminds me of my first baby: She was born at 24 weeks, and weighed in at 2 pounds even. She quickly lost six ounces and went down to 1 lb 10 ounces !

She wasn't small enough to fit the booties pictured--but she was small: only 14" long. I was afraid to touch her she looked so fragile. (When she came home from the hospital 3 and 1/2 months later her hand was still no longer than a thimble, and she had to wear baby-doll-sized clothes.) She stayed under 2 pounds for a month. It wasn't until the bishop came over to the hospital and gave her a blessing, along with my husband, that she finally started to gain weight.

That was over 25 years ago. Apart from a few food allergies when she was young--and not being able to make up her mind now that she's "old" (she changed her major a million times), she's totally fine. I'm hoping that, with today's modern medicine and technology, those other 8 babies will be totally fine too.