At 9:40pm, Tom and I were working on the computer when we hear some weepy sounds coming from the boys room. Ian pads in, tear-streaked cheeks, saying, "Daddy, I'm sad."
He sits for a moment and we ask what is wrong.
"I just love caterpillars." More tears. "I miss my bug jar because I love it."
The bug jar, given to him by my mom, is a little jar that is worn like a necklace and has magnifying sides for closer examination. I have no earthly idea what became of it, but I have hunted high and low with no luck. After friends Annika and Jesseca spent an evening admiring/stalking a small green caterpillar, Ian has been on a caterpillar/bug jar kick.
"I love my bug jar so I can catch a caterpillar and it turns into a butterfly and I can keep it."
We discuss how awesome caterpillars are and how we can build a butterfly net.
"Yeah, I totally know how to do it. Mommy, we need to build a robot butterfly net and I can do it!" I tell him that he might want to patent that idea.
"I want a butterfly to keep as a pet." We discuss how butterflies and caterpillars aren't really meant to be pets. We look up caterpillars on Wikipedia. Ian sat on my lap, enthralled with the various caterpillars (the hairy ones are "girl caterpillars"). The discussion went from caterpillars to worms. I was okay with caterpillars. Worms aren't my favorite, but we managed to look at a few and discuss good worms vs. not so great worms. And how a worm is not a caterpillar.
The discussion moves along to butterflies, a topic that I am much happier with and we look at a few butterfly facts before looking at a video of a monarch butterfly emerging from his cocoon. At one point, we looked at cocoons of bees and then of a cockroach-which was enough to put me in a cocoon. Blecch.
For a few moments, I thought how fascinated he was all of this. Like a junior entomologist, he was spouting off facts and his curiosity was peaked.
As soon as he went off to bed, I went to Amazon looking for that bug jar on his wish list (we couldn't find it, so we put on it there) and discovered a butterfly garden that you can buy complete with several caterpillars where you can cultivate them into butterflies and release them.
It might be just the thing so that we can learn how to love something, by letting it go free.
5 comments:
What a sweet boy! That does sound like the perfect gift for him.
Now that sounds like a brilliant gift idea!
You mean you can learn and play with toys at the same time? Michael is going to love this concept!
The perfect gift!For a perfect little boy!
What a great gift idea! You are such good parents. I love reading your stories about your kids.
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