Butterflies, ice cream, and head-to-toe mud

Zuzu: 3.68 yrs old
Bear: 1.57 yrs old

The Butterfly House was just what you would imagine, a little piece of fairyland inside a greenhouse. There were instructions posted before you went in, telling you to hurry inside so the winged residents wouldn't escape through the open door, and to keep an eye out for the little creatures underfoot. A gravel path weaved through lush plants with colorful flowers. In one corner a little gurgling fountain ran into a little pond. At first, you didn't see any butterflies. Then you saw one. Then with excitement you spotted a second ... and after you'd been in there a while you saw them everywhere, dozens all at the same time.

A Butterfly Guide was there, just the sort of person you'd want to find in the middle of this tiny Enchanted Forest, a cheerful and absent-minded expert on the subject of butterflies. She kept up a constant chatter, sometimes addressing us and sometimes herself, breaking off frequently to mutter about the bumblebee that kept evading her net or the newly emerged monarchs that were still stretching their wings before they could fly. She told us not to touch the stinging nettles, but said butterflies love them, and some people swear that stinging nettle soup is delicious. She clucked to butterflies the way one would summon a cat, and persuaded them to climb onto her fingers, where they sat folding and unfolding their glorious wings. She helped us to see caterpillar poop on kale leaves. She kept lifting up her baseball cap as she talked, and then pulling it down at a cockeyed angle. Picture Radagast the Brown giving a nature talk.

I think Zuzu was not totally sure what the point was of being there, since we see butterflies in our own backyard. She was quiet, and she looked at the butterflies, and listened to the Butterfly Guide, and smiled at my enthusiasm, but she didn't seem to really connect with it or to understand why we should continue standing there looking at butterflies after we had already seen thirty of them. Bear was in the stroller and seemed interested, but I didn't dare let him down to wander free amongst stinging nettles and fragile wings, so after a while he began to whine and struggle. We left and went to the gift shop, where we got a little butterfly coloring book.

After this we drove just a little further to a Mennonite Country Store. I love shopping at the Country Store, but it isn't close to our house so I hardly every go. As we pulled up I saw a sign announcing that the store was celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, and they were grilling free brats and handing out free ice cream. I had brought along Snacks for lunch, but this seemed better. We got in line.

There were a lot of people, and it was hot and muggy. Zuzu opened one of the coolers full of soda, pulled out an ice cube, and colored on the sidewalk with it. People stood in a tent preparing food. Mennonite girls in plain dresses with black socks and black shoes and hair in braids. Women in bonnets. We didn't have to wait long to get our food. As we ate in the shade, a man turned on a big machine that I'd taken for farm equipment. There were two wooden barrels on top with silver canisters inside them. The man dumped ice around the canisters and then covered the ice with salt, and I remembered making ice cream in science class as a kid with coffee cans, using the same method. So I informed my children that the man was making ice cream. But I had no idea how the machine worked, with its spinning wheels and pulleys.

Zuzu ate her brat, and then ice cream. Bear ate ice cream.

We then proceeded into the store. At this point I had a toddler on my hands who hadn't napped yet and had eaten ice cream for lunch and who absolutely did not want to be in the stroller anymore. I set him loose in the grocery aisles. He ran back and forth--literally ran--touching everything, shouting barbaric yawps as he went. To his credit, he heeded my command to touch gently; he didn't pull or knock stuff off the shelves (I mean AFTER that one big bag of oats right at the beginning). But he was running, and he was shouting, and the store was very crowded, and let me tell you, the other customers were not at ease with the situation. Normally my children elicit lots of smiles when we're out and about. Today it was more like fear. And concentration, as folks tried to bypass the hollering toddler zigzagging like a maniac at their feet. We did get a smile from a lady in the checkout lane, but that was after I'd wrestled Bear kicking and screaming back into the stroller, and pushed him around the rest of the store still screaming, drowning out the church music they pipe into the place, until he wore himself out. The lady in the checkout lane looked at Bear, and said, "It's tough to be a little guy, isn't it?" In that moment, I think Bear liked her better than me.

We had parked next to a large field. While I was unstrapping Bear from the stroller, Zuzu frolicked a few feet into the field. This of course made Bear very much want to frolic. I am a fan of field frolicking, so I let him. However, when Zuzu saw that her brother had joined her, she took this to mean that the two of them ought to chase each other the entire length of the field, and she plunged down the slope. At the bottom, she discovered that the grass was soggy with mud. One of her feet sank and mud seeped into her shoe. Now, Zuzu is against The State of Being Dirty, so she retreated. Bear, on the other hand, continued barreling full speed ahead. I tried to stop him, but he skirted my outstretched hands, lumbered a few more steps, and more or less belly-flopped into the puddle of mud.

The mud didn't bother Bear. But he was outraged when I scooped him up and carried him to the car. I buckled in the kids without making a single attempt, before driving away, of cleaning or wiping up a drop of mud. I didn't even touch the mud streaked across my own arm from carrying Bear. Bear's shorts were soaked with it. Mud was on his face and his arms and his legs. When we got home and I opened up the back car door to survey the damage, I reminded myself that I had once heard there was a study which concluded that kids today are too clean. The lengths parents go to to maintain their kids' cleanliness is actually sabotaging their health, I remember hearing. Was there ever such a study? Has it been debunked? Don't tell me. I use that study often to make myself feel better.

Also:
Zuzu in a leotard dancing like a ballerina in the sunroom.

Bear discovering the butterfly picture Zuzu had colored during his nap, which I'd taped up in the sunroom. He shouted his word for butterfly very excitedly over and over. Then he came into the dining room to get me, shouting "Buh-eye! Buh-eye!" and pointing to the sunroom. I asked him to show me and he did--he ran across the room and pointed to the picture on the window.

The kids snuggling on the couch with Daddy at bedtime while he read Bible stories.

Zuzu and Bear snuggling sleepily together, for perhaps the first time since he was a newborn. Zuzu asked if he wanted to snuggle, and he was so sleepy that he didn't mind when Daddy put him across her lap. It lasted a few minutes.

Waddling; goodbye highchair; poop in the tub

Zuzu: 3.67 yrs old
Bear: 1.56 yrs old

It is July 21, exactly one month after the summer solstice, and for the first time I can tell that the days are shorter. 

Bear likes to pound his chest like a gorilla.

Zuzu likes to waddle like a penguin. Except she doesn't exactly waddle, she bounces, adorably. I tried to instruct her on what the word "waddle" actually entails, because after enjoying her bouncing version a few times it began to grate at me that she wasn't using the word waddle correctly, and the meaning of words MATTERS! I told her how to waddle. I showed her how to waddle. I confused her. I took the bounce out of her step. I told her to forget everything I'd just said and done and waddle however she wanted.

Zuzu does not yet take instructions well when it comes to learning something challenging. Her attention span is nothing. If she tries the activity and fails, she wants to be done, to do something else. She doesn't yet understand that she can do it, if she would listen, if she would practice ...

Bear hasn't been in his highchair at all the last few days. He was getting strapped into his highchair for every single meal and snack and many art activities, then one day he climbed into one of the regular chairs at the dining room table and I gave him his plate and let him eat, and since then we've been done with the highchair. Because he throws a fit if I try to put him in it. And because I don't mind it this way, either. If he drops his spoon he'll get it himself.  And I don't have to wonder as much if he's had enough food. He gets up and down a lot during the meal, but when he's still hungry he always comes back right away to eat more.

One of Zuzu's friends came over to play. The first thing they did was dress-up. Then they sat together in the rocking chair, snuggled side by side, still wearing their princess dresses, and read Bible stories to each other. Each of them had one of the kids Bibles on their lap, and they flipped through, and took turns telling the stories. Zuzu improvised quite a bit on her turns and her friend corrected her on the details.

While on the phone with poison control yesterday (don't ask--everyone's fine), I was watching both kids in the bathtub splashing happily away, when I noticed the water surrounding Bear slowly fill with poop. He's been having soft poops recently. So the poop in the bathtub wasn't a log. It was a cloud of little soft poop bits. Luckily he was sitting closest to the drain, so when I opened the valve the poop cloud moved away from Zuzu. Still on the phone with poison control, I lifted Zuzu out of the tub, to her surprise and displeasure, and spent the next minute trying to clean the tub and Bear and slapping his hand every time he picked up poop. Finally I finished the call, got rid of the poop, put Zuzu back in the tub and started the bath over.

Bear hollers "hi" and "bye" to strangers whenever we're out shopping. Zuzu still likes to greet other shoppers, too, so we get lots of smiles when we're out and about.

Mailing a Package and Spitting Milk

Zuzu: 3.67 yrs old
Bear: 1.56 yrs old

Zuzu in the backseat with the package on her lap that we're going to mail to Arizona. There's a toy inside the box. She knows the toy isn't for her, but she played with it before it went in the box, and she's a little sad that it isn't staying with us. She talks to the toy inside the box all the way to the FedEx store. She tells it what's going on outside, since it can't see for itself. She points out the house where one of her friends used to live, and explains that he moved to a different house. She tells it the color of each car that we pass. She shouts out, "there's an American flag!" Then she carries the package into the FedEx store and puts it on the counter. The FedEx lady is really nice. Zuzu tells her about the toy inside the box. Then she says, "Do you want to see what shoes I'm wearing?" So the FedEx lady leans over the counter and Zuzu holds up her foot, clad in a sparkly Princess Belle flip flop. When we leave, Zuzu shouts the name of the toy up to the heavens, not hoping to get the toy back, not expecting it to hear her, but just giving vent to her feelings of missing the toy.

The kids in a friend's backyard, playing in a blow-up pool. Bear is tentative and clingy when I try to put him in the water. He gets over it quickly. The other kids play at the edge of the pool. Bear stands in the middle. He splashes and stomps and cackles and has an immensely good time.

The way Bear looks holding milk in his mouth, looking up at me with mischief all over his face. "Don't spit it out," I warn him sternly. He has been spraying milk out of his mouth for fun. I've told him no, and now he's just trying to provoke me. His eyes are laughing at me. He keeps taking sips of milk and not swallowing until I've glared at him a while. But he doesn't break the rule again ... he just toes the line.

Things we eat; Bear getting his way so often

Zuzu: 3.65 yrs old
Bear: 1.53 yrs old

Zuzu walking hand-in-hand with Daddy, chattering away. Me pushing Bear in the stroller behind them. Zuzu told Daddy that dirt is icky. He asked why. Because we don't eat it. Daddy started listing other things we don't eat that don't qualify as icky. Zuzu, missing the point, began listing things we DO eat. "We only eat cheese, sandwiches, and bread," she said. Daddy and I laughed and questioned her on this. She expanded her list to include bananas, peas, and green beans, and then said that's all that she wanted to say. She was done with that subject of conversation. I keep picturing the way she looked, wearing her Elsa dress, her curly hair in a side bun, holding Daddy's hand and throwing up her other arm to punctuate the items on her food list. Her sweet little arm, her finger pointing in the air as she said "peas." Her bouncy step.

Bear will get his way more often than is good for him. In my household, and beyond. He is, first of all, super cute. He is also extremely insistent. He makes a lot of noise and acts desperate--like sort of crazy--when he wants something. If you give it to him, his whole body goes into spasms of delight. He laughs, his face shines, his arms wave up and down, he kicks his feet. It's very rewarding. If you don't give him what he wants, though, he becomes Unhappy. Heartbroken. He can't understand. He thinks the world is so unfair. There's nothing else he wants. He asked for so little. He won't be able to think about anything else all day. He is personally offended by your cruelty. He weeps. He will not be distracted or pacified. It is much easier to give in to Bear's demands than to hold one's ground.

Zuzu appearing at the foot of our bed at 5:00 a.m., waking us up by saying somewhat loudly, "Mommy, I love you!"

Zuzu and Bear on the couch with Daddy. Standing on the couch, dancing, plopping down with a squeal. Both the kids. Over and over. 

Bear sitting on Zuzu's bed flipping through books. He pulls the books off the shelf one by one, and climbs onto her bed to flip through each one, then climbs down again and picks another. He does this until the shelf is empty. This is maybe his favorite thing to do right now.

Bear's way of dancing: stomp stomp stomp! But he gets so gleeful when he dances.

Zuzu. Chattering. Telling stories. Playing. The sweet, sweet sound of her voice.