It was an exciting day. We took pictures and tried to learn what to feed it (sugar water) and tried to keep it alive until Baba arrived. I am not sure we were doing it right, or if the butterfly was “getting it”. It didn’t appear to be interested in eating. Part of its wing broke off (malnutrition?).

We managed to keep it alive a few days, then convince my daughter that we needed to let it go. We had a small Release Party for the butterfly. Somehow, when getting the butterfly cage from her room, the butterfly managed to escape. After chasing it around for 5 minutes, we were able to get it back in and down to the backyard.

The beautiful thing is that, after release, it flew directly to the butterfly bush my daughter had us plant a few years earlier. Maybe because it was starving, it spent plenty of time drinking (and posing for pictures) before flying off.

On the other hand, who knows what she’s watching. Maybe time to check out the parental controls on the cable box…

We’ve gotten help for him, and he is finally starting to “open up” and try saying more things. And he is getting better. The better he gets, and the more he talks, the more we realize just how much language he was learning despite not talking much.

We always knew he was intelligent based on what he understood, and his creative use of signing, often making up his own signs to get the point across.

Now that he is starting to talk, he is quickly creating quite complex sentences. It helps us worry a little less. In fact, every day for the last week+, in anticipation of going to my mother’s for Christmas, he’s been asking, “Go.. Baba’s.. house.. now?” When I tell him, no, not yet, I always get a disappointing, “awwww!”

He still struggles sometimes with pronunciation, but his classes are helping with that. But we still see the frustration when we have trouble determining he is trying to say. Sometimes, he gets upset to the point of tears. We are lucky that his sister is often much better at understanding what he is trying to tell us.

Speaking of Baba’s house, we were creating a photo album (at her request) for a gift, and were looking at some other the things his sister was doing at his age, and wondering if he would be capable of the same. In one picture, our daughter was showing off a craft she did, and Ms. Kaz said, “can you imagine him doing that?”

And it made me wonder if, because he was not verbally communicating as well as she had, if we were treating him as if he were younger. It made me wonder if, because of this “issue”, we were not challenging him as much as we did her.

We know he’s intelligent, and we see how well his language is progressing. I have no worry he will get up to speed. But, for those who know me, you know I always need SOMETHING to worry about.

(like finally finishing that butterfly story!)

One of the things about getting older is that my eyesight is… well, not getting worse, but different. One of the things I am sure I did as a kid was chuckle that “old” people had to take off their glasses to read something, or look at something up close. Unfortunately, this is one of the things I now need to do.

So, I took off my glasses, and suddenly noticed a thin “string” going from the mesh, around back of the caterpillars “neck” and back to the mesh.

Now, I am used to a chrysalis hanging straight down because, well, that’s what the ones we ordered last year did. But, checking the trusty Internet, I saw that a Black Swallowtail’s chrysalis hangs on the side in exactly the way this caterpillar was.

I called my daughter up to share the excitement (yes, Mom and Dad were getting excited, too!) of The Next Step. And within a day or so, the chrysalis was fully formed.

And not the waiting begins…

Next: The Wait

Hopefully, you got as much loving from your kids as I did this year. Hopefully, if it is your weakness like mine, you got enough candy as gifts. And hopefully you are fortunate enough not to get as many calls/emails from work as I did…

The other day, we were outside and she says, “Oh, cool!” and runs over the the parsley. I remember thinking that I’ve never seen her get that excited about eating the parsley before. Instead, she shows me a caterpillar she found on the parsley. We both got excited because she has been “hunting” for a caterpillar for months now.

So, we run and get the bug jar and go inside to find out what kind of caterpillar we have…

Seraching on “what kind of caterpillar do I have” we discover the website Butterfly School which has lots of useful information (but little pictures). We find that the type of caterpillar that likes to eat parsley is a Black Swallowtail. Searching for pictures of the Black Swallowtail caterpillar, we can confirm this is the caterpillar we have.

This fact is also exciting because last year, we ordered a butterfly kit with Painted Lady butterflies, so this year, we will (heopfully) have a different kid of butterfly.

“hmm…”, I say, “it says here not to keep them in a jar with holes, as they won’t get enough air to breath.”

This sends my daughter into a panic, and the caterpillar needs to come out right now! So we dig out the butterfly house we had from last year, place the caterpillar in there and ready more about caring for your caterpillar.

Every morning, I clean out the caterpillar poop (those things are pooping machines!) and twice a day, my daughter picks some fresh parsley, carefully sprinkling it with water to make sure the caterpillar gets enough, and watch and wait.

We hung the caterpillar house near my daughter’s bed, out of the reach of the cats and The Boy. My daughter gets a thrill out of watching it crawl around, eat and, of course, poop. And I have to admit, Ms. Kaz and I get exciting about seeing it eat and crawl around. We never knew caterpillars could be so cute.

“Why is he so cute, daddy?” my daughter asked me one night. My explanation was that once we took it in, cared for it, and made it our own, that just increased how attached we got to it, and how cute we find it.

So now, we await the next step…

Next: The Transformation!

And one of the cutest examples of her new skills was when she created her Bug Journal.

After catching several different kinds of bugs (moth, dragon fly, lady bug), she took it upon herself to create, illustrate and author her own bug journal. The pictures are adorable, and the writing is terrific (e.g. “he was a good bug. he was scared. I miss him”)

She has created many terrific books – about family, a day at the beach, etc. – carefully drawing, writing, and stapling them together. They are great to share with the grandparents when they visit to show off what she’s learned and what her interests are.

There are a lot of artists in her family (mostly Ms. Kaz’s, but some in mine), and I think she’s inherited that gene…

The only problem with the bug journal is that after she stapled the “The End” page onto it, she says she cannot add new pages. I need to get her to start a new bug journal so she can add the newer bugs she caught since then.

Next: Garden Bugs

This was a big accomplishment for my daughter at the beginning of the summer. So, we got out a jar with holes punched out in the lid (I have no idea why we already had one of these…), and put the moth in the jar.

My daughter carried this around at the end of the day. Before bed, we made a big production out of releasing the moth, and, although she was sad and missed the moth, she understood we needed to let it go.

A few days later, we saw a bug net in the dollar bin at Target, and bought it for the kids (despite my daughter insisting she didn’t want it). As expected, the first couple of weeks, it was mostly, “Daddy, can you catch a bug for me?” We caught a good variety, including another moth, lots of dragonflies, and a lady bug.

The bugs stayed in the jar no longer than until bedtime, but sometimes just a half hour, or even a few minutes. Eventually, my daughter began trying with the net herself… and she got really good at it! And she had fun.

It was a great $1 buy!

Next: The Bug Journal

At bedtime, my wife sings my daughter two song, I tell her a Pokemon story (different combinations of the same plot lines over and over), do a nighttime dance, sing her songs, and we talk about what to dream about. The processes couldn’t be any different (especially in terms of length of time!). And this doesn’t even count the number of times she calls us back up.

Anyhow, she always complains about having trouble falling asleep. The reason we talk about what to dream about is because I taught her a trick I sometimes use, which is to think about what to dream about. I likely never dream the actual dream, but it helps me fall asleep.

Unfortunately, I am the one who needs to decide what she should think about.

So, one night, we have a dream which involves leprechauns and their pot of gold. This seemed to get my daughter’s interest, and lead to the following conversation:

Daughter: And leprechaun gold is like a THOUSAND dollars!
Me: Wow! Is that a lot?
Daughter: Yeah! We could buy lots of toys!
Me: Cool!
Daughter: No, we could buy a whole store!
Me: Wow!
Daughter: And I could still have enough left over to GET A JOB!
Me: Uh…
Daughter: I’m going to be a veterinarian!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my job. You poor schmucks with no money probably have no idea what I am talking about…

“Where’d you get that?” I asked her. “From school,” she replied. I asked her if the teacher said it was okay, and she said she just took it.

Every few days, she comes home with what must be Little Treasures to her. Sometimes, it makes sense; a penny one day, a colorful bead another. Sometimes, it is a stick, or a piece of paper someone else wrote on. Or a paperclip.

We have a lot of paperclips in our house.

Little Treasure or not, I don’t want her to get into the habit of taking stuff from her class. “You really shouldn’t just take things from school, sweetie,” I tell her.

Her response?

“I only do it on days I have pockets…”