April 1st, 2011

Lauren got off the bus from Kindergarten and wasn’t pleased with me.  “MOOOOOOM, today is April Fool’s Day.  You are supposed to play a trick on me and Sydney!”  I simply pulled up my blog to the April Fool's post from last year and told her how I found a fantastic April Fool’s Day prank for the girls and how it did not go over well, so I decided maybe mom’s aren’t supposed to play tricks on their kids.  Lauren didn’t skip a beat and said, “Well last year I was 4 and a half and this year I’m five and a half, so I would understand it better.”  For the second year in a row I was a disappointing April Fool’s Day mom.  Next year I’m going to have to rethink and come up with something good for slightly fragile girls wanting to April Fool’s day festivities. 

But it was a big afternoon anyway, we were releasing the butterflies!

Lauren got a butterfly garden for her birthday and in March I ordered the caterpillars.  The girls loved it.  They watched the caterpillars get bigger, form a cocoon, then hatch into butterflies.  The only issue was I thought the temperatures when the whole thing was said and done would be good to release them.  Nope, way too cold.  You are only supposed to keep them as butterflies for 3 days and release them.  We had them for about 10 days and I was feeling bad for the poor guys.  Their life span is only 3 weeks, so I already wasted almost half their life in a cage.  But it was warm enough and we were setting the caged butterflies free!

The butterflies had total Stockholm Syndrome.  They weren’t flying or going anywhere but walking around the grass.  The girls kept picking them up and trying to get them to fly.  After a couple rounds of that abuse, the butterflies took off and fast. 

My next fun activity with the girls is to going to be watching chicks hatching out of eggs.  We are going to the farm in Illinois next week to pick out our eggs and I have the warming lights set up in the basement.  Apparently they hatch after 4 or 5 days and then we’ll have little chicks to raise.  The hardest part is going to be keeping our blind dog away from it all.  April Fool’s Day!