Weaning party and the "science" of it all...

I just recently weaned my daughter Honeypie and had a wonderful weaning party to celebrate it all.  When I say recently weaned... i mean in January/09. When I say weaning party, I mean last summer!  heh heh.  It took us a while. 

She had said back then that she was ready.  So we planned together what to do to celebrate. She wanted a "no more milky festival" and wanted to invite all her friends to celebrate with her.  

It was very melancholy on my part.  Every part of the celebration was touching for me.  We had this wonderful relationship, this soothing bonding we took part in every day.   I did not know how we were going to replace this.  I did not know if she understood what this entailed.   Since we were not sure if we were having anymore kids... I wanted to remember this time together forever.  (I think for honeypie the reality of it all did not hit till a couple of days later.  Who could not turn down a chance for cupcakes and balloons?) 

But i let her decide when... and here we are now... fully weaned.

So we set on to make some festival signs.  We drew and painted together about what this all meant.

The day of the celebration came.  We read some beautiful books together.  The book "Someday" still makes me cry every time we read it and "On the night you were born" is just wonderful too!

The day before I had made "goody bags" for her and all her friends. She told me what to make... Milky bracelets (i made them out of felt and fabric glue),   I made "milky" goody bags out of felt too and I molded mama necklaces, (a mama holding her child) for each of the girls.

 

We all made a "mama and child" craft together.  All the girls had to decorate their babies and mamas according to what the mamas looked like.  (hair color or texture)

The mama's shirt opened to reveal her breast to nurse the babies who were swaddled.

Honeypie made me with pink eyes!  and decorated her swaddling blanket with apple stickers and me with glitter glue.

We set a beautiful table.  

I made cupcakes for her and her friends.  Milky cupcakes and tinkerbells on toadstools!  

(yes.. those are hershey kisses)

Sooooooo.  Now the mystery and magic remained...

and what a perfect week to find it all out!  

This week at "unplug your kids" was science theme week.  So we grabbed the chance to put our great human body pop-up book to good use.

We have been reading a lot of this book lately, so...

I traced Honeypie on a large piece of paper and while we read the book together we set out to draw the different parts of the body.  I let her draw what she was most interested in... the heart ofcourse... lungs and bones.

Working on only the top part of the body this week... since we were trying to find out were human milk comes from, I drew the main body parts on different colored construction papers and we set out to cut them together.

Heart

Lungs 

Ribcage

Honeypie drew in the bronchi and bronchioles

Identifying the collar bone

Working on the spine

We started to briefly talk about joints (on the elbow)

her skull and teeth

And finally the breast.  

We spoke (as much as a 4 year old can grasp) about being an adult and woman breasts being able to produce milk.  We labeled the different parts of the breast and talked about milk traveling up a milk duct and out the nipple openings.

It is still work in progress.... 

and I must say Honeypie is AMAZED at the whole "science" of it all!!