Here at home, the girls are all about critters lately. A couple of weeks ago, this piece of bark ended up on our back porch after a windy night. The newly-converted "Buffy" viewer in me immediately thought, "Sweet, someone left me a stake!" The girls, on the other hand, thought it made a pretty awesome snail freeway:
Sunday morning, we planted sunflowers, daisies, and tomatoes in little containers, and the girls cannot wait for them to grow ("Can we go check on them now? How about now? Do you think they're growing now?...").
(Clearly, I do not stage my kitchen for blog photos. Hello, cluttered background!)
We took weekend custody of our classroom caterpillars this past weekend, and man, those suckers are the bamboo of the insect world--you can practically see them growing! A week ago, they were the size of paintbrush hairs, and now they're all spiky and chompy, and at least as big as Ellie's pinkie finger:
Did you know that caterpillars are pretty much liquified inside their chrysalis, and then their cells are reassembled into the butterfly form? Cool--and kind of creepy--but a nice metaphor for how transformations (of people, rooms, careers, life paths...whatever) sometimes mean breaking things down completely before rebuilding into something beautiful. And now I'm picturing Jillian Michaels-faced butterflies singing the "Biggest Loser" theme song.
Here's a video of Ells talking about the caterpillars. The first time I asked her what they're going to turn into, she said, "A cwiss-a-liss!" I'd been expecting "butterflies" and had no idea she even knew the word chrysalis, but of course, when I tried to get her to say it on video, it was a no-go. I also wasn't recording when she said, "Dere shaking dere booties!" Bummer.
Did they actually pick up that snail to put on the stick freeway? If so, good for you raising girls who don't think bugs are icky! I will try to do the same with Laila, however, she will NEVER see me touching a snail so that may not happen.
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