Mr. Big here came home with us from a party on Saturday. It wasn't until we got home that we realized we had a couple of stowaways - that would be Mr. Little and um, Mr. Littler and um, Mr. Even Littler, etc. So what do monarch caterpillars do? Eat mostly. Apparently in the wild, monarch butterflies are careful about laying only one egg on a milkweed plant, so having several of them munching away on our scraggly young seedling wasn't going to work out in the long term.
This morning we picked out a couple of nice bushy specimens of milkweed down at Armstrongs and transplanted some of our voracious little friends. I have a feeling I'll be back for more though. I noticed at least three eggs on the new plants. Something tells me that whole thing about them laying only one egg per plant is baloney. Have you seen a butterfly egg lately? As you can imagine, they're pretty small. How would they know there was already one on a certain bush?
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Butterfly errand complete, we relaxed at home for a bit before checking out the first session of a children's choral group. Mini-pear and I were in a parent/child singing class back in Washington and while I wasn't exactly on the lookout for another one, this opportunity just sort of fell into our laps. The class meets about five minutes from our home and a friend of ours is directing. The waving of silk scarves was a little Waldorfy for me, but mini-pear enjoyed herself and wants to go back. That empty schedule keeps getting tighter and tighter.
Afterwards we brought a friend home to hang out for a couple of hours. The girls played dress-up and ate popsicles, set up some elaborate Playmobile drama, created some yogurt/applesauce/strawberry jelly concoction and played Truth or Dare. Eavesdropping on six and seven year olds playing Truth or Dare is the best (okay, maybe I should get out more...). The dares? Pour yourself a second glass of soymilk! Drink it really fast! Take a picture of the dog! Make the dog lick your hand! Trick my mom into eating a tomato! And the truth just doesn't get more revealing than how old is your little brother and how many baby teeth have you lost?? Oh, it was crazy! You should come play sometime.
We also drove down to the climbing wall for a repeat of last week's rock climbing fun. This time around, I ran upstairs to take a picture from the balcony. Nice view, but now I know I'll probably never try the rock wall myself. Hello vertigo. Nice to see you again.
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Having finished Beowolf last night, we're reading Henry by Nina Bawden. Instead of bad words, Charlie says blankety blank. Well, actually he does swear, but it's a children's book, so Nina writes blankety blank in their place. This has caused some disbelief ("Let me see what it actually says!") and some confusion ("Hey dad, another way of saying a bad word is to say blankety blank!") and finally endless guessing about what bad words fit which blankety blank or just plain blank. These are whispered in my ear between fits of giggles, even when I'm the only other person present in the room.
