Acting Brave

Today we gathered with my family for breakfast at the Belgian Waffle in Midvale. Dakota was her charming self & Clinton a little bit cranky, both quite impatient for food. We ordered Clinton their "Garbage Hash" and he loved it (even though it had peppers and mushrooms in it). It's surprising the things he eats now. On Christmas Eve I tried feeding him walnuts, which he loved and ate without complaint! At the care center they feed him prunes, and he loves them. Sometimes I forget, just like I grew up into liking certain things, so does he.

After breakfast, Matt and I headed downtown to go see Body Worlds 3. It was crowded, but having the right connections (i.e. a Mom who works there) got us through all the lines quicker. Matt had wanted to go for months now, but I had been really hesitant to go. The whole idea that these bodies were real people, creeped me out and made me very squeamish just thinking about it. But I braved up, like a real grown up would do, and we went to the exhibit.

I will tell you that it was really awe inspiring, but I still couldn't keep by stomach from twisting or shake the heeby-jeebies feeling from my back. I could handle the individual body parts just fine, it was the whole bodies posed that freaked me out, even once I was in there, but I acted brave and practiced my breathing methods so I didn't have an anxiety attack. The embryo room was amazing, but very sad (and they do state that to the best of their knowledge, none of them were ones that could be saved). I will say, the displays of all the arterial systems were the coolest things I ever saw. They preserve the arterial system first then dissolve the surrounding organs and/or tissue, and they end up with a complete map of the arterial system from that area. It's amazing how many blood vessels the human body has, and that they are in almost every space of the body.

So, I acted brave and got through it (but I won't lie and say I wasn't unabashedly glad to be out of there)!

I wonder how often parents must have to act brave to make their children feel at ease, when really they are scared or squeamish of something so trivial and silly like this?