The birds and the bees

Yesterday while Noah was taking a bath, he was washing his penis and started asking me why it was standing up. I explained that when he was older he would use this feature for sexual intercourse which is how mammals (humans being mammals) had children.

"Will I have to cut it off?" he asked me.

"No."

"Why did you cut yours?" he asked me. (I am circumcised. He is not.)


"When I was little they cut my mine because my grandfather told my mother that if I ever fought in a war that there would be less likelihood that I would get an infection there if I was circumcised."


"Why didn't mines get cut?" Noah asked.

"Because when you were little children at the hospital were getting infections just from getting it cut. Plus mommy didn't think it was necessary or natural."

"But why are there these balls inside my testicles?" he asked. Yes he knew the word testicles.

"Those balls are your testicles. Don't squeeze them like that it will hurt. They will produce sperm when you are older. And those sperm are like a seed that will fertilize an egg. And a fertilized egg will divide and divide and divide and get bigger  and be a fetus. And then that fetus grows and grows and becomes a baby. That's just like what you did. And then you grew bigger and came out of Mommy."

"So my sperm will go into the ground and go bigger and bigger and grow with water and sunlight.."

"No that's plants. We aren't plants we are animals."

"But will my Penie have to shoot out? How will my penie go to the mommy?"

"You mean to your wife? Who will be the mommy of your children?"

"Yes."

"Well that will be sexual intercourse. Your penie will go inside the woman's vagina and then the sperms"

"How many sperms?"


"Millions of sperms but only one will fertilize the egg, IF it even does fertilizes the egg."

"Where do the other sperm go?"

"They will just die off."

"WHYYYY!"

"They just do."

"Will I have a lot of sperms?"

"Yes."

"Will I shoot sperm all the time?"

"Ummmm."

"But how does the mommy lay the egg and when does it hatch?"

"No the egg is inside the woman and it's not that kind of egg with a shell." Then I recalled we had been reading about Salmon. "You know how in the Salmon book the female Salmon lays the eggs and then the male salmon shoots its sperm through the water and those sperm fertilize the egg? That's sort of what happens with humans except with humans and other mammals this happens inside the woman, or female, instead of outside in the water, with fish."


Long pause. And then somehow finally bath time was finished.

"Can I play angry birds?"

Yes.