Chrysalises

  Follower

Leader.   

The black dots are "frass", a way to say caterpillar poop that doesn't make 2nd grader giggle. 

New temporary pets

In second grade at Parker's school, they do a long project where they learn the life cycle of caterpillars and butterflies.  They get caterpillars and watch them turn into butterflies, they collect milkweed and hatch (?) some monarch caterpillars which then turn into butterflies, they visit a butterfly festival, and they sell milkweed seeds in decorated biodegradable pots to raise money for Save the Monarchs or somesuch.  

In my garden I bought and planted some dill....I don't really use dill but I read that it keeps the cucumbers company.  Parker found a couple caterpillars chowing down on my dill plants and captured them.  I'm not sure how a caterpillar/butterfly finds a tiny dill plant in the overplanted jungle that is my garden, but they did.  

 These are terrible pets in that they will only eat fresh organic herbs, but they are great pets because they eventually leave home.  Hopefully in grand fashion after they've become a Swallowtail butterfly.

There are 2 of them. One day, one of them basically doubled in size.  Parker named him Leader, and the smaller one Follower.  We've all enjoyed watching them mill around and chow on herbs.  One morning Parker was looking and looking and looking and finally said: "I can only find one."  That was sort of worrisome to think he might be loose in the house somewhere, possibly hiding in my shoe. I looked and looked too, and finally found the missing guy at the very top wedged between the lid and the side.  Bob later reported the one of them had been unusually active that morning, circling the top, circling the bottom.   Apparently he was looking for a spot to start his chrysalis.  ~NOT~ a cocoon, those are for moths I've learned.

Parker inspected him and realized it was the small guy, "IT'S FOLLOWER!"  We were all surprised...my money was on Leader to be the first to change.    Here's how he looked for about a day.  The next day his outer skin molted off - Parker showed me this by saying "see that thing down there that looks like his head fell off?  It didn't really, that's just molted skin.".  Luckily she told me that before breakfast or there might have been more than molted caterpillar skin on the floor.  

 

 Now he looks sort of like a leaf.  Leader made his chrysalis too, but his was lower down and it's green.  It will be interesting to see if they are a different type of butterfly, or if Leader somehow made his  chrysalis green for camouflage reasons.  I'll try to get some pics that taken and posted.

Outtage

I'm trying to get some pictures posted.  Bear with me, this time of year is totally insane!
Here's Parker's recent lost tooth.  It hung on for days and days and days and finally one morning it was hanging out and wouldn't go back, Parker was crying because it hurt no matter what she did.  So we both got our nerve up and she let me yank on it.  I was prepared to use all my might....we were running late, there was no time for tooth drama!  It came out so easily that she didn't even feel it!  She gave me such a look of "you are so useless" because she thought my fingers slipped.  The new tooth is already peaking through.

I made the headband she's wearing too. 

Riding out storm...

Update:  All is well.  We just got heavy rain, luckily.  Parker has taken full advantage of my distraction, eating junk food and watching youtube videos.

 

 

St Patrick's Day

What did you do before your 2nd cup of coffee yesterday?  I made a leprechaun hat for a stuffed animal. Parker has a Webkinz named Clover she got last year around this time, and she's been counting the days down to St. Patrick's day so she could dress him up and cart him around.   

And then she taped together a bunch of garbage to make him a house.  This house features a giant refrigerator, a card game and a hat holder.

 

Inside the fridge.  Lots of sweets.

St. Patty's outfit:  greens and blues. 

 

Ruby Red Lips

This is what woke me up this morning. A bossy chatty hand puppet that eats inanimate objects.

Sock hop pic

Dinner for Squinkies

Here's a "what Parker's into these days" post.  She loves her Squinkies.  They are these tiny little plastic animals and I really don't get what's so interesting about them, but they're very popular.  I'm pretty sure the markup on them is 10,000% and someone out there is laughing all the way to the bank.

Anyway, this should give you some idea of the size.

And this is what she does with them:  sets them up in these little vignettes all over the place. They take a lot of time to set up, and then NO ONE IS TO MOVE THEM.   Here they are at a restaurant.  I helped her make the tiny menus on the computer and she cut them all out.  The stuffed giraffe wearing the Post-it hat is the chef.  The little girl Squinkies in the front are the waitresses.  The Diet Coke can is there for scale.

              

Bird ID

What kind of bird is this? They've discovered the finch feeder recently. It seems very un-natural for them to perch on it....they've had to practice quite a bit to get used to it. From what I can tell, they're eating the niger seeds. I mixed in sunflower chips with the niger because I didn't think I'd have enough finches for a whole feeder's worth.  Oh, and the wind is blowing some of his feathers outward.....they're usually smooth.

Rest of the cookie pictures

Here are the rest of the pictures I promised.  If I don't post them now, I never will.  

It's times like this that I regret letting Parker wear a shirt that is too small, inside out, all day long and not brush her hair.  Oh well.

Cutting out cookies

A leftover ball of dough scraps that she played with off and on throughout the day.

Decorating the very special longhorn cookies for Bob.  He likes red hots on his Christmas cookies, so Parker was in charge of those.

I finally let her eat one.

Close up of the decorations.  I do the icing (my signature squiggle style), and Parker does the sprinkles.  You can't really tell but they have sparkly sugar on top in addition to the few bits of colored sprinkles that I allow.

Christmas eve in the kitchen

How to you fill the looooong day before Christmas?  Cooking and eating worked pretty well for me.  I started early this morning making cookie dough, then Parker and I cut them out and baked them.  She made it nearly all the say to the end before getting bored.  I have pictures of her helping...I'll put those in a different post.

After we iced cookies, it was time for a special fancy Christmas eve appetizer I've never tried to make before.  Shrimp Dumplings!  I had shrimp in the freezer, and the other ingredients on hand, so if these never got made, I was only out a couple bucks for the wonton wrappers.  They were great - just like at a restaurant.

Next it was time for pizza.  (I bought frozen dough). Parker had canadian bacon and onion and we had canadian bacon, onion, mushroom and pineapple mango salsa.

And now I'm going to SIT DOWN for the rest of the evening and help Parker track santa on the NORAD site.  

Christmas eve cookies

Parker is literally skipping in circles with excitement.

New Tradition - Elf on the shelf

In case you don't have little kids, or you live under a rock, there's a new thing sweeping the nation at Christmas time. Elf on a Shelf. I suppose this was a tradition in some families, and then some genius relized the opportunity for profit.  I knew about it last year and resisted, but this year I caved. Lots of Parker's friends were coming to school talking about where their elf was each morning.

It works like this:  This little elf sits up out of the way somewhere and reports back to Santa whether or not they've been good.  They aren't allowed to touch him or he loses his magic.  And somehow, magically, each night he changes locations.  Some elves in some homes are VERY creative and mischievous (waaaay to creative, in my opinion - just google "elf on the shelf ideas"...I guess some folks don't have enough to do during the holidays?!)....ours just basically hides, although one morning he tried to do a little fishing. 

So between this and her Playmobile advent calendar (pictures coming soon)....where she gets a little tiny toy that eventually makes a scene....she's super excited each morning and pops out of bed bright and early, instead of sleeping in.  Guess all that sort of backfired, but that's ok - at least she's waking up in a super cheerful mood and is semi-occupied for the first half hour of the morning.  

Now what someone needs to create is the summer vacation "advent" calendar.  A new toy each morning for 3 months.  Where do I sign up?  

Holy cow

A week ago, I suggested that Parker build a nativity out of her stuffed animals, and this is what she came up with.  

Polly the polar bear is Mary.  Bailey the waterdog is Joseph and DQ the cow is Baby Jesus.  

Also in attendance: Wylie the white cat: sheep.  Halloween cat: camel.  Pinky the lion and Rainbow the dog are shepherds.  Not sure if you can tell, but they have shepherds staffs made from pipe cleaners.  Foxy, Candy the bear from Canada and Melissa the bear: 3 Wise Men.

Duchess is the angel and also the narrator.  

Today's artwork: more ponies

Here's today's drawing....more ponies.  Full disclosure:  Twilight and Fluttershine are ponies that she sees on cartoons, they aren't made up, although decorating their hooves and adding horn might be.  So technically, I guess these are unicorns.

Zebra dress

Today's fashion pic: Lindsey the zebra wearing a sleeveless top, a skirt and a headband, all made from dryer sheets.

Slinkie Box hotel

The Slinkie boxes turned into a hotel, not apartments.  Here they are - in the back against the wall.  I'm a little concerned about the overhead at this hotel....there are 3 receptionists.

The horse that is stuffed into the barbie gown is the main receptionist.  The assistant is the little rabbit (?) with the laptop sitting on the overturned bowl.  You might have to click on the picture to see it close up, but notice that Parker has clipped a little barbie flip phone on it's ear so it can work the phones.

Break Begins.

Good think it's break time, because I'm worn out!  Today was the last 1/2 day before Christmas break and even though it's a 'non instructional day' (the principal says "why pretend?") , it was super busy.  We started off with an awards ceremony that I helped produce to recognize the students that participated in the PTA's art contest.

 Parker won a blue ribbon this year again for her artwork, and she'll be advancing to the district level of judging. (It was also pajama day). 

 After the ribbons, they did a "decorate a human tree" and selected 5th graders got to decorate the principals.  It was very cute and the kids loved it.

    Then the kids watched a movie in the classroom while the moms set up the class parties.  I made a Roll A Snowman game.  It was a big hit!  

Parker's teacher gave everyone Slinkies as a gift.  Parker collected all the boxes she could and brought them home to build an animal apartment house.  (you can see the slinkie cast aside next to the tape.

I can only hope that the gifts we have for her under the tree are as interesting as the boxes they are packed in.